Derreck Vaughn | The Valdosta Daily TimesCrews continued working as quickly and safely as possible throughout South Georgia to have power up and running.

VALDOSTA — Many in South Georgia are still without power, but crews continued working Thursday as quickly and safely as possible to have everyone up and running.

Georgia Power reported it is ahead of schedule and expects to have 95 percent of customers back on the grid by Saturday afternoon. In Lowndes County, 1,100 Georgia Power customers are without power.

Colquitt EMC reported it has 2,000 customers in the county without power.

Across Colquitt EMC’s seven-county coverage area, Berrien, Brooks, Colquitt, Cook, Lowndes, Tift and Worth, it has restored 42,700 customers with 8,300 remaining Thursday afternoon.

Sonya Aldridge, manager of marketing and member services, said Colquitt EMC’s crews along with additional crews from Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative are working diligently to restore power to all of their members.

“We will continue to work 24/7 until the remaining outages are restored,” Aldridge stated in a release.

Also, to better serve its membership with restoration recovery, the Colquitt branch office locations in Adel, Nashville and Quitman are closed until Monday, Sept. 18. All Colquitt EMC resources have been centralized to accelerate the restoration process from Irma.

The City of Valdosta was working Thursday to have all intersections open. As of Thursday, there were nine intersection lights not working.

Sementha Mathews, city public information officer, said the city is picking up debris left over from Irma. She said the city is on schedule for all trash and recycling pick-ups but is focusing its debris pick-up on areas still without power.

“We want to focus our resources on helping the crews get power up and running for houses,” Mathews said.

More than 100 calls for fallen trees and large limbs were received by the city during the recent storm. The city continues getting reports after the storm. With about 3,500 scheduled customer pickups daily, Richard Hardy, public works director, said the overall cleanup could take several weeks to accomplish.

In Lowndes County, Advanced Disposal will pick up yard debris upon request by calling (229) 244-2466.

 

Thomas Lynn is a government and education reporter for The Valdosta Daily Times. He can be reached at (229)244-3400 ext. 1256