“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Roberson, a 40-year-plus veteran with the city, said Tuesday morning at the Emergency Command Center in the county courthouse.
Dougherty County Emergency Management Director Ron Rowe, the city’s fire chief, said Tuesday morning that officials were assessing damages before putting together a plan of attack to remove trees from roadways and restore power to thousands impacted by the storm.
“An early estimate, there were as many as 1,500 to 2,000 homes affected,” Rowe said. “The whole landscape has been changed.”
City Manager Sharon Subadan and Mayor Dorothy Hubbard called for an emergency meeting of the Albany City Commission at 2 p.m. to keep the government leaders up on steps being taken to assess the storm damage.
“We’re getting overhead video from drones and from helicopters to help us assess the widespread damage,” Subadan said as she manned a computer terminal at the Emergency Command Post. “Our first priority was to make sure Phoebe (Putney Memorial Hospital) had power and then to clear roads to the hospital. We’ll assess the damage and formulate a plan to address it.”
Hubbard said that while the damage is significant, she is thankful there were no more injuries than have been reported.
“This was an awesome, horrific storm,” the mayor said. “And while we’re concerned about the many families who have been impacted, we are thankful today that we did not have significant loss of life. There is one fatality that we know of, and our prayers are with that family, but we continue to hope that there were few injuries. We have not gotten reports of that kind of damage.”
Police Chief Michael Persley said his department is busy directing traffic in areas where roadways are blocked, but he said there have been “no dramatic reports” of crime associated with the storm and subsequent power outage.
“We do not have reports of wholesale looting (which had been rumored),” the chief said. “There are a lot of people out walking the streets in the city’s neighborhoods, but with the electricity off in so many homes, that’s not unusual. Plus, a lot of people can’t get to their homes because of trees in the roadways.”
Ward III Albany City Commissioner B.J. Fletcher was out directing traffic on Pine Avenue Tuesday morning after delivering coffee, doughnuts and food to crews who were working through the night to restore power.
“It’s nice that some local business leaders stepped up,” Fletcher said. “Dunkin’ Donuts is a chain business, but it’s locally owned by Jeff Lanier, and he has gotten coffee and doughnuts to the line crews. We’ve taken sandwiches and dinner plates (from her BJ’s Country Buffet restaurant) to these folks who have been working all night through that storm.”
Subadan asked citizens to stay off the roadways as much as possible.
“We want to keep the roadways as open as possible for emergencies and cleanup crews,” she said. “Please, stay off of them as much as possible. We also ask that people stay away from downed power lines and to treat intersections where traffic signals are out as four-way stops. And, please, don’t call 911 unless it’s a true emergency.”
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