Thursday’s bone-chilling temperatures in northeast Georgia forced school delays. Thousands of Habersham County students and staff arrived at school two hours late to avoid sub-freezing temperatures. With threats of the mercury again dipping down into the teens, First Baptist Church of Cornelia opened its gym as a shelter for the second night in a row.
And then there were the busted water pipes.
Fred’s discount store in Clarkesville flooded Thursday after the store’s sprinkler system froze and then burst. Water ran out the door and iced over on the pavement in front of the store. It left behind a frozen, slippery hazard but that was nothing compared to what it did inside.
Store aisles flooded and Fred’s manager Jeannie Spoo says some of the store’s products got wet. Still, she says it wasn’t as bad as what happened last year. Cold blown in by the polar vortex in January 2013 caused water pipes at Fred’s to burst and Spoo says, “It was a hundred times worse.”
It took employees five hours to clean up the store Thursday. Fred’s was shut-down while they did. The store reopened late Thursday afternoon and is again operating on its normal schedule.
