Crews Work To Clear Roads, Restore Power In Bartow County

CARTERSVILLE, GA -- Bartow county and Cartersville crews have worked throughout the night and into Saturday in an effort to restore power and clear major roads of downed trees and power lines after the first winter storm of the season made its way through the county.

Cartersville Mayor Matt Santini said on his Facebook page that the city's public works and electric crews have been working all night to restore power to customers and remove debris from the streets.

"Falling branches continue to fall causing outages in some areas where power had already been restored," he said early Saturday. "Nobody likes to be without power, and our folks are battling Mother Nature to get service back to everyone as quickly as they can. If you see them in your area, perhaps offer them some coffee or something warm. They are giving it their all."

As of 1 p.m. Saturday in Bartow County, a little more than 12,000 Georgia Power customers are without electricity, as are roughly 2,800 Cobb EMC customers, 220 Amicalola EMC customers and 244 GreyStone EMC customers.

Bartow County Public Works are also working "around the clock" to clear roads and remove trees, the Fire Department said.

"Emergency services have been extremely busy all night and continue to be inundated with calls for power lines down and fire alarms," it continued. "Please travel with caution if you have to be out on the roads."

Across metro Atlanta, Georgia Department of Transportation crews have treated more than 3,000 lane miles, distributed 172,000 gallons of brine overnight and have plowed and salted all bridges, ramps and overpasses.

"We will work diligently throughout the day in Northern Georgia in preparation for the low temps tonight," the agency added on its Facebook page. "Majority of our interstates are in good shape and we will be hitting I-20 West (especially Carroll County) hard today as it is one of our hardest hit areas."

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