Power restored to downtown Gainesville

GAINESVILLE - Power has been restored to downtown Gainesville but Georgia Power says it still had 17,000 customers without power in the city as of 9:00 Friday morning.

Georiga Power Area manager Darrell Snyder says they're tackling outages that affect larger numbers first and then hitting the scattered reports. He says if you see power come back on around you, but remain in the dark yourself, they want to hear from you.

In all, Georgia Power had about 168,000 customers without electricity at the peak Thursday. That number was down to 29,000 Friday morning. Service is expected to be completely restored by afternoon, according to spokeswoman Konswello Monroe.

System-wide, Jackson EMC still had about 3,000 customers still without power as of 5:00 this morning, which is down from a morning peak yesterday of 50,000. The largest remaining outages are in the Hall-Lumpkin area, where 1,500 customers are still without power; in Gwinnett County, about 1,000 were in the dark; and, around 500 Jackson EMC customers were still without power in Banks, Barrow and Jackson counties.

"We have followed up on reports that some of our customers have had difficulty in
reaching our offices to report power outages," Jackson EMC spokesman K.D. Bryant said. "Because of calling volume, customers who call and do not access the automated outage reporting system may receive busy signals. The most efficient way for customers to report outages is to call their local Jackson EMC office and select the automated outage reporting system."

Bryant added you should be ready to provide your account number, along with their address, phone number and any information, such as downed lines, that will "help us locate and repair the problem."

Around Gainesville, several major intersections where traffic lights were not working late yesterday afternoon were back to normal erly this morning. Trees and tree limbs still blocked many streets, however. Dixon Drive which was blocked all day between Wessell and Chestatee had reopened early today but it was single-lane traffic in many places. Several trees were blocking the street yesterday and much debris remained in the roadway early today.