Georgia Power: 200,000+ without power across the state

ATLANTA, Ga. (WJBF) — Georgia Power says there are still around 200,000 of its customers without power as of Wednesday.

They say flood waters, downed trees and broken transformers make it tough to get to all the areas — and they have to fix those first before they can even get to someone’s street.

Thousands are still without power across georgia as the race to restore electricity continues with crews working over time.

Georgia power says more than 1 million customers lost power due to Hurricane Helene.

Now more than 80 percent of them have their power restored. That’s why they are working quickly with Alabama Power and Mississippi Power. They have crews on the ground with about 20,000 resources going to some of the hardest hit areas in the state to get power back hopefully in the coming days.

“Our smart grid technology to restore power quicker and it will be able to reroute power before this an outage before crews can get out. We have had about 1500 transformers destroyed and 8000 broken poles,” said Georgia Power spokesperson, Alicia Brown.

Georgia power says this historic storm — one of the hardest the state has ever endured — is making it difficult to get crews to the hardest hit areas like coastal georgia, augusta and valdosta due to flood waters, downed trees, debris and broken transformers.

“Our crews have faced flooding due to the extensive damage — so we have been able to access those areas. We have also utilized our drone and helicopters to get a wide eyed view to restore power for customers,” said Brown.

“We try to make sure our hospitals, police stations and first responders and those areas are tended to first since they have to assist with emergency related issues,” said Brown.

Georgia Power says they don’t have an exact date but hope to restore power in the coming days to all impacted communities across georgia.

Georgia Power says nearly one third of its entire customer base was impacted by Hurricane Helene.

You can check the outage map online to get a status if you are able to access your smart phone.

https://outagemap.georgiapower.com

https://poweroutage.us/area/state/georgia

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