From your friends at Amicalola EMC, we hope everyone has a great school year!

It’s the beginning of the school year and you know what that means! It’s time for teachers within the Amicalola EMC service area to apply for a Bright Ideas teacher grant! Do you have an idea for a classroom project but just can’t find a way to fund it?  Go to https://www.amicalolaemc.com/my-community/bright-ideas/ and complete the online application and you just might receive the funding you need.

We’ve set aside $50,000 for teachers at 30 schools across our service area.  If you are a Georgia certified teacher at one of the participating schools, you can apply for a grant of up to $1,000.  For more information, use the link above or call Stacey Fields, Director of Public Relations at 706-253-5287. *Funding is in compliance with Georgia’s unclaimed property laws.

There are just over 100 members still out from the storm. Our broken pole count is approximately 120 poles.  We have crews working on every outage. We anticipate all power will be restored by the end of the day if not sooner.

The storm was brutal and left a wide path of destruction as it went through.  We know being without electricity is inconvenient and difficult – everyone, including us, depends on it for almost every aspect of our home and work life.

We’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you to our members, from the employees, staff and management of Amicalola EMC. You guys have been great offering words of encouragement, giving support both on facebook and in the field when you’ve encountered our crews, offering food and drinks, and just overall being supportive and understanding of how bad the storm was and how hard all the crews have worked to get the lights back on.

Restaurants in Jasper and Ellijay have stepped up to prepare meals to feed this army of line workers we’ve had here working. Area hotels have housed them and other businesses have helped us obtain needed supplies.

We are blessed to live in a community like this. All Amicalola EMC employees are local and live in the communities we serve, so the same folks you might see at church or in the grocery store are the ones out working on the lines, in our Dispatch control center, in our warehouse, truck shop, and in our offices.

We sincerely hope everyone can get back to their normal routines very soon and we are thankful that there were no major injuries to any line worker or any of our members as far as we know.

We are getting so close! We currently have 193 members out at 61 separate locations.  At these 61 locations,  a fairly small number of members are affected at each location, so the total count will be going down slower.

We know it’s been a long 4 days and we thank you for your patience and support during this difficult time.  We do realize how much we’ve all come to depend upon electricity and we know how inconvenient it is to be without it.  Again, we are very thankful for all the assistance we were able to secure from EMCs across our state, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee and contractor crews from Pike, Tree Line Services and Real Tree, Inc.

We continue to ask for your support and patience as we work hard to bring this massive restoration effort to a close.

We’re getting closer! We are now down to 656 members out, spread across 81 outages.

As we near the end of our fourth day of power restoration, we currently have 1,438 members out at 137 separate locations. The outage count has dropped from 26,000 at the beginning of the storm and we are pleased with the tremendous amount of progress that’s been made.

The remaining outages are at 135 separate locations and the majority are affecting less than 10 members each.  This means as each outage is restored, the count will only go down slightly.  We still have the same number of crews working and our goal is the same as it was in the beginning, to restore all power as soon as is safely possible.

Thank you for your patience during this difficult time.  We ask for your continued patience and support as we work hard to get the lights back on for everyone.

Crews are continuing to make good progress and our outage count is now down to 1226 members! Cherokee County is down to 513 members out and Pickens has 595.

Please remember as primary lines are being rebuilt, all power will be restored to any location that is prepared to take power. In some cases the service line will have to be put back up. If you’ve had damages to your meter base, mast head, etc. these will have to be repaired before your individual service can be re-energized.

We are definitely in the end phases of this massive power restoration and we are very thankful for all the crews from other areas that have came in to help us restore power to our members.

Here are some photos of damages our crews are encountering.  There are estimates that thousands (not hundreds) of trees are on the ground in Cherokee, Dawson, Gilmer and Pickens counties.

As of 7:00 am this morning, our outage count was 1713 members.  As previously mentioned, we have 35 outside crews working on our system, in addition to all Amicalola EMC employees.  The following is a list of areas where crews are working.  NOTE: This list is not all inclusive, there will be crews working in additional areas as the day goes on.

We continue to ask for your patience as we continue this massive restoration effort.

July 24

-Helens Dr

-Eagles Perch

-Bent Tree

-Yellow Creek

-Rock Creek, Pleasant Union

-Ghorley Road, Bethany Trace, Lower Bethany

-Fitts Road

-Ryo Mtn, Cochran Road

-Salacoa Heights

-Apple Lane

-Grandview, Southview Trl

-Clayton

-Old Mill White Ext, Hawks Nest

-Sparkling Way

-Stancil Road

-Jordan Road, Flat Bottom

-Lower Cartecay

-Haley’s Lane, Big Ridge

-Roper Road

-Dry pond (Cherokee County) extensive damage in this area

-Roscoe Collet

-Hickory Cove

-Jerusalem

If you have information to report, please call one of our outage numbers: 706-253-0359 OR 706-276-0359 OR 706-864-7979. This is the route to get outage information to the appropriate place.  As we near the last phases of restoring power, we continue to ask for your patience and understanding.

We are now down to 4362 members still out of power. The current location of crews can be determined by looking at our outage map which shows outage information in real-time.

Cherokee County is now down to 1101 members out and Pickens is down to 2663 members out.  We continue to replace multiple broken poles and the pole count is at 80 and rising.

Our crew are exhausted but will keep pushing.  Our members are stressed and tired and it’s a good time to remind everyone to stay away from downed power lines.  Please always assume power lines are still energized and stay away from any downed lines.

Thank you for the hundreds of posts and messages showing support for our crews and the crews from out of town who came in to help us.