While North Georgia was hit hard by Wednesday’s storms, Covington managed to escape relatively unscathed, though a large portion of Covington lost power for nearly an hour.

Covington utility director Bill Meecham said the city incurred extra costs of around $2,000–$3,000 for overtime pay, equipment, fuel usage and “a limited amount of splices, wire and hardware.”

A large number of Covington customers lost power around 4 p.m. yesterday, when the city’s substation on Elm Street lost power because a tree broke a utility pole when it fell into a 115,000-volt transmission line next to Cousins Middle School on Carlton Trail. Meecham estimated that around 5,000 customers were affected by the outage, but most had power restored by 5 p.m.

The transmission line was jointly-owned by the city and Georgia Power, which was still repairing the line Thursday.
The city also had a limited number of small, scattered incidents that resulted in temporary power losses, the worst of which was off Elks Club Road, where a tree caused damage to lines there.

All customers had their power restored by 8 p.m., except for one house that required repairs at the house itself before power could be reconnected; Meecham said it was his understanding that house was reconnected Thursday morning.

Snapping Shoals EMC was not hit as hard, but a falling tree knocked out a line on Ga. Highway 162, which affected about 1,400 customers, said spokeswoman Leigh-Anne Burgess. She said the power was restored fairly quickly, but she did not say how much repairs cost.