Roy Ioannides wandered down Atlanta's Springdale Road on Thursday and peered into empty power trucks.
After no electricity or cable TV for three days, Ioannides was seeking someone to help him, offering maintenance crews free use of his yard, a place to stay, anything to get them to come to his house.
“I’m just looking for someone to tell me when my power will be on,” the retired math teacher said. “I’ve been without power since Monday [at] 11 p.m. I have no hot water and I’m not so good.”
Ioannides’ neighborhood of 280 homes near Briarcliff and North Decatur Road was the last area in the metro region to have power restored, and Ioannides' residence was one of the last ones to regain service. Georgia Power expected to have power to everyone by Thursday night, spokeswoman Christy Ihrig said.
The beautiful historic homes surrounding Emory University in Ioannides’ neighborhood had turned into a campsite this week as residents relied on coolers, propane-powered stoves and swapping stories to fill three days without power.
The storm that swept through the state on Monday night knocked out electricity for 240,000 Georgia Power customers, Ihrig said. Another 120,000 EMC customers in the state lost power, including 1,900 in remote areas of North Georgia that were still without power on Thursday.
In Ioannides’ neighborhood, the amount of damage was widespread with downed wires, fallen utility poles and blown transformers. The neighborhood design actually complicated things.
For aesthetics purposes, utility poles are tucked behind the homes and surrounded by trees and shrubs. While the streets are attractive, repair work is made difficult by this design, said Wade Durham, a crew foreman for Service Electric Company of Chattanooga.
“The lines are behind the house, which is great because you can’t see them," said Donna Toulme, a 25-year resident of Springdale Road. "But we realize what trouble it can cause when you get a storm like this."
Ioannides learned about these difficulties after locating the Chattanooga power crew behind a neighbor’s home. He watched as the men dug a hole, removed a splintered pole and cut trees. They joined together to lift a 700-pound new utility pole and connected the wires.
The 40-man crew from Tennessee was deployed to Georgia at 5 a.m. on Tuesday. The workers spent two days in Ellijay before driving to Atlanta at 1 a.m. on Thursday, Durham said.
Georgia Power brought in 500 people from seven states to help respond to the outages.
Ioannides wanted just one of them to restore electricity to his large brick home on North Decatur Road so he could refigerate his eye drops, which he needs for his glaucoma.
"I've been keeping them in a cooler," he said. "Don't want to open the refigerator."
Ioannides also ate out every day, showered at the gym and went to the library to check his stocks online each morning.
Many of his neighbors were out of town on spring break vacations, and would return home to spoiled milk and blinking clocks, though some would have debris-free yards.
“I cleaned up the neighbors' yards so they wouldn’t return to all these branches,” said Toulme, who had her power restored at 2 p.m. on Thursday. “I was OK as long as I had my propane camping stove to make coffee. But some of my neighbors complained they were chilly at night, then she thought about Japan and said this is just an inconvenience, not a problem.”
Emory University’s Briarcliff campus was without power Tuesday and Wednesday, but no classes were impacted. Offices were shut down and some employees worked from other locations, said Karen Salisbury, chief of staff for campus services.
Three facilities were damaged by trees, including Carlos Hall, which houses the university’s museum. The roof was damaged, but none of the artifacts were harmed, Salisbury said. Emory also lost 33 trees.
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