No serious issues from hurricane

Published 5:04 pm Thursday, October 11, 2018

Troup County did not see any major damage from Hurricane Michael, which made landfall Wednesday afternoon and reached Georgia by nightfall.

LaGrange Mayor Jim Thornton said he was unsure of how many downed tree branches and power lines the city responded to, but that there were a few isolated power outages.

“I know that we had a few isolated instances of power outages almost all caused by fallen trees or limbs,” Thornton said. “I know there was one particular incident on Broad Street where a large tree came down. We also had a good many limbs fall out on the Country Club Corridor, which seems to be a recurring issue for us.”

Thornton said the city was prepared for worse conditions than what occurred.

“I don’t think any of those outages lasted more than a couple of hours before the power was restored. We were really very fortunate considering what the hurricane brought to our neighbors to the south,” Thornton said. “Our plan was to be prepared for it and get our power back on and then be able to assist those that had a more severe hit.”

Troup County utilities responded to eight downed branches with the assistance of the Troup County Sheriff’s Office on most of the calls, according to Rachel Camp, Troup County citizen engagement specialist.

One power line was taken down by a tree on Greenville Street, Camp said.

“This storm affected most of those south of us, but we did see an impact here,” Camp said.

Other tree branches the county responded to were on Hamilton Road, Roanoke Road and Weathers Drive, Hogansville Road and Rawls Road, Wares Cross Road, and Glass Bridge Road.

TCSO Sgt. Stewart Smith said deputies were given chainsaws before the storm and started responding to downed trees by 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

“Anytime there’s trees (down), it doesn’t matter if there’s a hurricane or starting to storm or tornado or whatever, we’ve got crews out there that are going to start cutting the limbs down because we can get there,” Smith said. “We’re already out there, the road crews have to be called in and so it’s a normal operation for us.”

Hogansville City Manager David Milliron said the city did not have to pick up any branches or power lines Thursday due to being proactive with branches.

“We started aggressively on Monday doing lots of different things,” Milliron said. “We aggressively lowered the lake level so we could avoid any flooding in the city. That paid off tenfold. We sent out all of our crews and had them trim any limbs. We also had a third-party tree company assist us.”

Milliron said on Wednesday the city asked residents to bring in their trash cans. Milliron said when they searched the streets Thursday, no branches were found. They did find a downed telephone line and clipped it, according to Milliron.