Tropical Storm Zeta made landfall as a hurricane in Louisiana, but maintained enough strength to down trees and cause massive power outages in Gilmer County.
Early Thursday morning, Oct. 29, Zeta made its presence felt in the county.
Gilmer County Director of Public Safety Keith Kucera said no loss of life or major injuries were reported.
“We had widespread power outages and trees down,” he said. “We had all hands on deck to clear roads.”
Chainsaw crews from several departments, including the road department and the sheriff’s office were out clearing roads. At times the crews were joined by Good Samaritans, he said.
“Even in some instances, we had some citizens join our crews to help clear roads,” Kucera said.
Support came in the form of food donations as well, from Country Corner Kitchen, he said.
“We are just extremely grateful for the support we received,” Kucera said.
Cleanup continued for the next few days.
Georgia Power reported 806,000 customers were impacted in north Georgia. By comparison, in 2017 Erma, which affected the whole state of Georgia, knocked out the power of 1.5 million customers, said Georgia Power spokesperson Allison Gregoire.
More than 4,000 Georgia personnel, along with crews from 14 states and Canada, worked to repair lines and poles.
As of 1 p.m. Monday, Nov. 1, Georgia Power was reporting power was restored to 99 percent of their customers.
Amicalola EMC was reporting 4,418 customers still without power as of Monday.
Zeta’s 60 to 70 mph wind gusts took down more than 80 poles and caused almost 80 percent of the system to go down, according to Stacey Fields, director of public relations at Amicalola EMC.
A majority of customers are projected to have power by Wednesday night, though some outages may still take until Thursday to fix.