DEL.ICIO.USUpdated: 12:12 p.m. April 14, 2009
About 25,000 in metro Atlanta still without electricity
New round of storms delay efforts to restore power
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
About 25,300 homes and businesses in metro Atlanta remained without power Tuesday, and utility companies said some wouldn’t have service restored until late Wednesday.
Hard-hit areas included Decatur, Tucker, Midtown and Buckhead.
David Tulis / dtulis@ajc.com
Parents dropping off kids Tuesday morning at Sagamore Hills Elementary School in northeast DeKalb County were stopped by a pine tree toppled in front of the school.
A new round of morning storms slowed restoration work Tuesday but moved off to the east shortly after daybreak as cooler swept into the state from the west.
Students with flashlights and glow sticks walked the darkened halls of Glennwood Academy, a 4th and 5th grade public school in Decatur that held classes for a second day despite being powerless.
“My kids said their morning activity was going to be writing a [protest] letter to the mayor,” said 4th grade teacher Angela Belgrave, “and I said go ahead.”
Principal Gloria Lee said the school in a renovated building has enough natural light in classrooms to allow for normal activity, more or less.
“We have a lot of windows,” she said.
However, the school delayed CRCT testing until lights are back on.
Power went out Monday morning at about 9:30, and Monday’s lunch was pizza — still warm at 11:00 a.m., cold later. Cereal and milk was brought in Tuesday for students who get breakfast at school.
Glennwood is part of the seven-school Decatur city system. Oakhurst Elementary also lost power but the other schools had service.
System spokesman Maria Lewis said the decision to keep Glennwood and Oakhurst open stemmed in part from a desire to keep all of the district’s students on the same schedule. The two schools opened late on Tuesday, however.
“Parents are very happy” the school stayed open, Lee said.
Georgia Power spokeswoman Konswello Monroe said 29,000 of the utility’s customers across the state remained without service at noon, with 25,000 of the outages in metro Atlanta.
Another 300 EMC customers, mostly in the Douglasville area, were still without power, said Terri Statham, a spokewoman for Georgia Electrical Membership Corporation.
Monroe said repair crews were brought in from Kentucky, Louisiana, Florida, Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and the Carolinas to help the 2,700 Georgia Power workers trying to restore service.
The forecast for metro Atlanta calls for mostly sunny skies and a high in the 60s Tuesday afternoon, with mostly clear skies and lows in the mid-40s Tuesday night. Wednesday will also be sunny with a high in the mid-60s, forecasters said.
Thursday through Saturday should be mostly sunny and warmer, with highs in the low 70-s and lows in the mid-40s. Another chance of showers and thunderstorms is forecast for Saturday night and Sunday, the Weather Services said.
Monday’s storms, which caught many by surprise with their intensity, killed one man. Raymond Jones, 63, a plumber from Pickens County, died about 10 a.m. Monday in Buckhead when a large tree fell and crushed the cab of his pickup truck.
The storms felled trees and power lines across the metro area and left streets and yards covered in tree limbs and debris. MARTA trains were shut down for about an hour by power outages, and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport recorded a wind gust of 52 mph.
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