By: Summer Kelley, Staff Reporter

As many as two thousand people found themselves without power on Christmas Eve according to Georgia Power.

Storms on Christmas Eve brought high winds and downed trees and power lines leaving many people without power for the holidays.  The National Weather Service out of Peachtree City said it is difficult to estimate wind speeds in areas that are not near one of the service’s four main weather stations, but there were many trees reported down in the central and north Georgia area. 

Georgia Power spokesperson Jeff Wilson said at the peak of the power outages there were 2,000 people in the Trenton area who found themselves in the dark.

“The northwest was the hardest hit part of the state,” Wilson said. “They had the highest winds.”

Power outages began on Thursday night, but most had their power restored by Friday night and power was restored to all customers in the Trenton area by Saturday afternoon.

“It was a busy Christmas for our folks,” Wilson said.

It was also a busy Christmas for Dade County Emergency services as power outages and downed trees combined to make an increase in calls for police, fire and county workers. Alex Case is E-911/Dade Emergency Management Director.

“We were overwhelmed with power outage calls,” Case said. “Calls of downed trees began at 7:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve and the last one came in at about 9:00 a.m. on Christmas Day.”

Case and county road crews were out all night.  Case said dispatchers took around 41 reports of downed trees that resulted in close to a hundred trees down throughout the county, most of which were on Brow Road on Sand Mountain.  The Davis Volunteer Fire Department even came out to assist with clearing trees from the road while Deputies helped as well.

“It will take a week or more to get all the trees up,” Case said. “We cut them down and moved them out of the way, but now we have to go clean them up.”