There’s cold, and then there’s Christmas week 2022 cold.
A sudden Arctic blast from Winter Storm Elliott that put Gilmer County in a deep freeze for several days leading up to the Christmas holiday made the week memorable and eventful for many, including public safety, electrical and water service employees.
Low temperatures dipped into the single digits between Dec. 23 and 26, dropping to just under 2 degrees on Christmas Eve, according to the University of Georgia (UGA) Weather System. Higher elevations felt below zero temperatures that night.
Crews from the Ellijay-Gilmer County Water Authority worked through the holidays making repairs, confirmed Gary McVey, water authority director.
“We had a pretty busy holiday weekend, but it could’ve been a lot worse. (Several) customers’ lines froze on their side of the meter, and we had several meters that had to be thawed, as well as several meters that froze and burst and had to be changed out,” said McVey. “There was a lot of homes where the homeowner didn’t let the water run. (In that case), it‘ll find a weak spot. You think you’re protected, but if there’s a place the cold can get to, it will freeze that line up. We had a lot of folks experiencing that.”
Only one water system main, on Kell Street, ruptured and had to be repaired during the freeze, but the abnormally cold weather didn’t help with any leaks in the system, McVey noted.
“We still have several small ongoing leaks to fix and get our water loss back down. We are seeing our water flow going out of the plant up, probably due to leaks, but we’ll keep working to get a handle back on it,” McVey said.
Amicalola Electric (AEMC) crews were also hard at work over the holidays, getting power restored to more than 3,000 Gilmer County customers. At one point, there was a total of 13,000 outages in the electric company’s service area.
Power outages started around 1 a.m. Friday, Dec. 23, with high winds and single digit temperatures with below-zero windchills bringing down trees, then lines. Three broken power poles also had to be replaced in Gilmer County.
“We had crews working around the clock including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,” said Stacey Fields, AEMC spokesperson. “Our crews are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week year-round, and this storm was no different in that respect.”
The unusually cold temperatures caused power transformer issues not usually seen in a typical winter storm, noted Fields.
“The transformer issues were unique in that, typically, if a transformer becomes faulty, an outage will occur only within the group of meters served off that transformer,” said Fields. “In this case, 50-plus individual transformers faulted, resulting in a main line being taken out of service. Each transformer on the line had to be opened and inspected. If a problem was found, all connections to the transformer had to be removed and a new one connected. This was occurring across our service area, and each one was very time intensive.”
Gilmer Fire and Rescue responded to a variety of calls during the freeze — mainly structure fires leading up to Christmas, then accidents after snow started falling the next day.
“It’s more challenging when you’re dealing with colder than normal temperatures and roads that are hard to navigate safely,” said Fire Chief Daniel Kauffman. “The community still expects a firetruck or ambulance to show up when they call, so we have to try to be ahead of these things. We were able to make it to every call we were dispatched to. It may take us longer to get there because we have to be more cautious, but every call for 911 was met. It was probably the busiest (Christmas week) since I’ve been here based on the weather, the number of disabled vehicles and cars being piled up. It was definitely an interesting couple of days.”
Just as many left their faucets dripping to prevent frozen pipes, fire and rescue crews also had to keep their water-dispensing equipment from freezing.
“We had to make sure the trucks stayed running and the pumps were circulating water. That was our big concern, the pumps freezing up and not being able to discharge water out of the hoses,” said Kauffman.
The deep freeze was a rare occurrence of snow chain weather for the fire department.
“The ambulances, all the smaller trucks and some of the firetrucks are equipped with chains so we can still get around,” said Kauffman. “On that Monday, we didn’t respond to any structure fires, but there were multiple vehicle-related (calls) — cars in ditches and cars piled up. Most of those were soft or low impact incidents.”
East Ellijay Police also had a large number of calls during the freeze, especially after the snow, confirmed Chief Larry Callahan.
“We had that one night there that kind of snuck up on everybody. We had a lot of accident (calls) like everybody else, and we worked a lot of wrecks. We tried to go around and check the abandoned cars to make sure no one was (still) in them,” said Callahan. “We got to a point to where we were only responding to accidents that had injuries. On the others, we were issuing them a self-reporting form because we couldn’t keep up.”
Two steep East Ellijay roads that normally present obstacles in freezing weather events — Maddox Drive and Coosawattee Drive — had to be closed for a time after accidents occurred.
“They’re both just too dangerous when they’re slick, but we took some grief over (closing them),” said Callahan. “There are people who think they can drive on it, and we did have some who were going around the barricades.”
At United Community Bank, an unwelcome Christmas surprise came when frozen sprinkler lines burst, causing extensive damage to the interior of the bank on Industrial Boulevard.
A call from Ellijay Police on Christmas Day notified bank personnel that water was gushing from the drive-thru area and running down the street. The standing water was ankle deep in some places, and the bank’s drive-through and inside teller areas now await complete renovations, noted Joy Marshall, UCB spokesperson.
In the meantime, the bank’s community room, which was cleaned up, is being used as a temporary teller area, while another customer service area is being run out of another part of the building that didn’t receive that much damage, noted Marshall.
A mobile bank unit, which will house three teller stations and a drive-thru option, was expected to be ready for use sometime this week.