Life in and around Augusta is slowly returning to normal after this week’s ice storm left 126,000 people without power in the 12-county region.
Chest-high piles of brush along roads marked areas where residents had cleared yards Saturday, and fewer people were staying at emergency shelters, according to Richmond County officials. The two shelters had 152 people staying in them Friday night.
Georgia Power expected to restore electricity to nearly all customers by noon Sunday.
But thousands remained without power Saturday evening. Augusta and neighboring Columbia County accounted nearly all of Georgia Power customers throughout the state still without electricity (about 15,500 of 17,400) late Saturday afternoon.
The utility called in help from outside the state and shifted workers from other areas to Augusta as power was restored elsewhere. About 4,500 Georgia Power workers were stationed in the Augusta area by Saturday.
“They don’t want to see anybody without lights on,” Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers said.
In some neighborhoods roads were still blocked by fallen trees or power lines hanging low. Power lines were down along the road in front of Henrietta Wearrien’s trailer in Grovetown, west of Augusta. Her power went out Wednesday and, without a smartphone or Internet service, her only news about emergency shelters or power updates came from visitors or snatches of radio news while charging her phone in a car.
The only official news update she had received was from a fireman who came by Wednesday to warn her about the downed line.
Wearrien, 54, has stayed with neighbors and survived on crackers, cheese and hot lemon water — the only food left after their frozen and refrigerated food spoiled earlier in the week.
“We’re on the forgotten side of town,” she said.
Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Saturday he “takes exception” to any suggestion the company has restored power more quickly to more affluent areas.
“We’re in a grid and we’re trying to make sure we’re getting the most customers we can with the service opportunities we have,” he said.
Corey Johnson, Augusta’s mayor pro-tem and commissioner of one of the city’s middle-to-lower income districts, didn’t fault Georgia Power for its response to the massive storm.
“They had their hands full,” he said.
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of census and power outage data showed that power outages affected a smaller share of the lowest-income households than Augusta as a whole. On Friday, about 23 percent of the outages were in neighborhoods with household incomes below $25,000. According to recent census data, about 27 percent of Augusta’s households have incomes below $20,000.
And while some of the largest concentrations of outages overlapped lower-income parts of the city, more affluent areas also had thousands of customers without power.
In the National Hills neighborhood near Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters golf tournament, the power at Spencer Pearson’s house went out Wednesday.
Pearson, 31, stayed with his girlfriend and returned Thursday to find a 30-foot pine tree had crashed through the roof of a bedroom. He spent Saturday watching workers removing the limb and cover the roof with a tarp.
Still, he said, “My girl was OK, my dog was OK, so we’re good to go.”
Nearby, the power at Steve and Mary Beth Lariscy’s house went out Wednesday while the couple was caring for their 1-year-old and 3-year-old grandchildren.
The next day, Mary Beth took the children to stay with family nearby who had power while Steve remained at home. It was all a big adventure for them, she said.
On Saturday, the couple placed brush and branches along the road, chopping with an ax after two chainsaws failed.
“They said prepare for the worst,” Steve Lariscy said. “But nobody had any idea the worst would be this.”
In Augusta-Richmond County Commissioner Mary Davis’ west Augusta neighborhood, dozens of 100-year-old maples, oaks and other trees were torn down by the storm.
“The landscape has been completely transformed,” she said.
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