The Augusta area, suffering through a winter wonderland from hell, now has the highest number of power outages in the state.
Freezing rain fell into the early morning, and now thick ice covers trees, sidewalks and patches of roadway. Toppled trees and branches have shut down roads and ripped down power lines all over the city.
About 124,000 homes and buildings have no electricity in the east Georgia region, most of them in Augusta and suburban Columbia County, Georgia Power reported.
Lori Davis, who lives in the low-income Harrisburg neighborhood near downtown, went without lights or heat most of the night. At one point the power came back on for three hours, then went off again.
The temperature in her home has only dropped to the mid-50s, thanks to storm windows, she said. She and her husband are dressing in layers, cooking on a propane grill and keeping their pistols and shotguns handy.
“In an urban environment, who knows what’s going to go on,” Davis said. “I’m concerned about something like this shutting the city down, and people getting desperate for things like diapers.”
The storm has brought the so-called Garden City, which is more accustomed to thick, hot summers, to a virtual standstill. Ice accumulation ranges from 3/4-inch to an inch, according to the National Weather Service.
The Augusta National’s legendary Magnolia Lane was littered with fallen magnolia limbs Wednesday, and James Brown’s bronze statue had a beard of ice.
The misery will likely continue into Friday. Snow flurries are expected Thursday, with temperatures reaching only 37 degrees by late afternoon, meteorologist Jeff Linton said.
That should only melt some of the ice before temperatures drop back to 24 overnight, causing a re-freeze and leaving black ice on the roads Friday, Linton said.
Augusta opened a shelter Wednesday night in a park community center for residents without heat, but only three people showed up, according to Mie Lucas, the city’s disaster preparedness coordinator.
In Columbia County, Emergency Management Agency Director Pam Tucker said a falling tree struck a child playing in the woods on Wednesday, sending the child to a hospital trauma unit. She had no information about the child’s age or gender, and a spokesman for the sheriff’s office said he wasn’t aware of the incident.
A sheriff’s deputy was also struck by a falling tree, but the injury only required stitches, Tucker said.
While tens of thousands in the area wait for power, another 55,000 customers have been restored. Georgia Power brought in an army of contractors and out-of-state utility companies to help with repairs, with a massive command center set up in the parking lot of Augusta’s defunct Regency Mall.
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