Downed trees which caused major problems at more than 20 Georgia Power substations in Clayton County was the chief cause of the massive outage in the county, a Georgia Power official said Thursday.
Clayton County bore the brunt of this week’s ice storm as felled trees created shutdowns in the utility’s substations to avoid electrocutions and injuries.
“We had trouble in 21 substations in Clayton County. That’s a lot of substations to have trouble with in one storm. That’s the root of the problem,” said Daryl Brown, Georgia Power’s regional manager for metro south, which includes south Fulton, Clayton, Fayette, Henry, Butts and Coweta counties.
Brown’s metro south territory experienced 134,000 outages since the storm began late Tuesday. By 11 a.m. Thursday, 79,000 metro south customers had power restored.
Most of the territory’s problems were centered in Clayton - specifically Riverdale and Jonesboro, which accounted for half of the 35,000 outages in the county as of 11 a.m. Thursday.
Crews worked feverishly nonstop to fix downed power lines and remove trees and other debris, often having to repeat their fixes as more ice-laden trees fell.
By 11 a.m. Thursday, for instance, the utility had some 800 line crew personnel along with engineers and tree trimmers working in Clayton. By then, there were still 35,000 Clayton customers without power, Brown said.
Outages were widespread as were the number of downed power poles, Brown said. The county had about 10 broken poles. One felled pole takes about five hours to repair, he said. A downed power lines takes about an hour.
Georgia has a total of about 107,000 customers in Clayton County. Not all of those customers were without power.
“We expect to have 75 percent of the customers in Clayton County to have power restored by midnight tonight (going into Friday),” Brown said.
For many in Clayton, it was warmer outdoors than inside
Chris Tobler and his family are well into day 2 without power. With the exception of a few hours of electricity late Wednesday, the family has been without power since 7 a.m. Thursday after spending much of yesterday without it.
“It’s pretty cold,” said Tobler, a driver for delivery company DHL. Tobler was holed up in a back bedroom while his wife, Leann and 5-year-old son, Robert, were asleep in the living room.
The Toblers got a bit of reprieve Wednesday after contacting Georgia Power. Today, though, it’s a different story. They’re unable to get in touch with anyone at the utility company. Their food is spoiling. Temperatures in the house hover around 50-degrees. The family hasn’t eaten since last night when they had breakfast for dinner.
Chris Tobler stopped by Kroger this morning around 6 a.m. It was open but the power was out.
The Tobler’s story is playing out all along Flint River Road, a hard-hit area of Jonesboro. Many traffic lights in the area are out. Stores and gas stations in the area are closed. People are cold and hungry and it’s about to get dark again. In fact, with the temperature in the 40s and the sun melting the snow and ice and making roads passable, it’s warmer outside than it is in many people’s homes. Although there are two warming stations in the county, many elderly in this stretch of Clayton are not only without power, they’re stranded because they have no transportation.
One resident who lives in the area and declined to be name had seen only one Georgia Power truck in the area in the last two days and that was at a commercial site not the residential area.
Despite challenges of outage, South Fulton family appreciates time together
Daniel Felder and his dogCoCo spent Wednesday night in front of the fireplace because there was no electricity to heat the south Fulton County home.
“The power’s been out since 8:30 yesterday morning,” Felder, the IBM network administrator said late Thursday morning. “Since I work from home, it’s impacting my ability to work.”
His was one of nearly 160 homes in the Brookwood subdivision, not far from Union City’s northern border just off South Fulton Road, that were designated on Georgia Power’s online outage map Thursday morning to be without power.
Just after noon, the power company’s web site showed a different distinction. On the ground, however, little had changed.
“We got power for a little while,” said John Woodard, Felder’s neighbor. “It came on at 10 this morning, but was back off at 11:30.”
That was the second flash of power in as many days. On Wednesday, power returned to their street for only about a half an hour.
During that time with power on Thursday morning, Woodard said the family made breakfast, took showers and turned up the heat in anticipation of another outage.
He said he and his wife made the best of being home with their four children, whose ages range from 10 to 13.
“We’ve been playing board games … doing a little Bible study now, trying to spend some quality time together,” he said. “In today’s time, we’re all consumed with technology and electronics. This is time with us that I think they’ve appreciated.”
Overnight, with no power, coping wasn’t easy, he said.
“We’ve had candles and the fireplace, and stayed upstairs where it was warmer,” Wooward said. “We didn’t have a lot of firewood, so we’re trying to conserve.”
Across the street, Felder said he and his dog stayed in front of the fireplace through the night, and connected to friends through his mobile phone.
“I texted friends to see what was going on,” he said, noting that he counted on his network of friends to help him rather than local officials. “People are now more empowered now with their smart phones and their laptops … to connect. They don’t need to rely on government resources immediately. They can rely on each other very quickly.”
That connectivity extends beyond technology, however, as he mentioned worrying about an elderly couple living nearby.
“I probably need to walk up there and check on them,” Felder said.
Woodard, a small business owner, said he worried less about the immediate concerns at home than he did the money he lost every he wasn’t open for business.
“I let folks go home early Tuesday and we were closed yesterday and today,” he said of his employees at the asset management firm he owns. “We’ll be closed tomorrow, too.”
Woodard said the time without power was a learning experience for his family.
“We had fun,” he said.
Woodard wondered aloud whether the outage helped them appreciate some modern conveniences that he grew up not having.
“Think about the people years ago who didn’t have internet … who didn’t have technology,” he said. “How did they survive? Why is it that we’re unable to make it without these things, but we went the majority of our lives without the necessity of things that we have now.”
During the night, Felder connected with a friend who lived within a few miles of him and had power.
“I told him that if I made it through the night, I would come over in the morning for breakfast,” he said. “That’s what I did. And since his power was back on, he gave me enough fire wood so I could make it through tonight.”
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