Thousands of people are still without power in Northeast Georgia as utility crews work around the clock to clear downed trees on power lines.
UPDATE: Power Steadily Being Restored in NEGA
The number of customers without electricity is slowly dropping. Habersham EMC’s Communications Director Nicole Dover says outages are scattered throughout HEMC’s service area and it’s been a challenge for crews to keep up. “Crews are dealing with downed trees, broken poles and broken power lines. In addition, the ground is saturated and trees continue to fall,” Dover says. “In some cases, power is restored and then another tree falls and knocks out the electricity again.”
Between 10:30pm Sunday and early Monday morning, HEMC crews successfully restored power to more than 1,600 customers in the utility’s six-county service area. That area includes Habersham, Hall, Lumpkin, Rabun, Stephens and White Counties. As of 6:30am Monday, Oct. 5, some 10,600 customers in the region remained without power.
Meanwhile Georgia Power, which reported more than 18,000 customers without electricity Sunday afternoon, had restored service to all but 1,100 of them as of 6:30am Monday. The three county area serviced by GA Power in Cornelia — Habersham, Banks and White Counties — were among the hardest hit. As of early Monday, power had been restored to all but 603 of the customers in those counties.
Georgia Power and Habersham EMC both have websites that allow you to report and monitor power outages in their service areas. For GA Power the online outage map address is https://outagemap.georgiapower.com/external/default.html. For HEMC’s outage map visit https://outageview.habershamemc.com.
HEMC customers may also report outages online at habershamemc.com or by calling: (706)754-2114, (706)865-4362 or (800)240-6812.
Updated 10/5/15 @ 6:30am
