BONAIRE, Ga. — Central Georgians are still working on repairs more than two weeks after tornadoes tore through the area. The powerful winds even toppled two out of three 50,000-pound power transmission towers in Houston County.
We show how the progress is going and run through the cost of rebuilding.
"We're shooting for somewhere in the next couple of weeks or so to have it back in service,” Mark Harkins says.
Mark Harkins is senior area coordinator with Georgia Transmission Corporation. He was there the night that two out of three transmission towers were knocked over.
"I actually saw the one tower back here blown over, so I knew right away that the winds had taken it down,” Harkins says.
Wires blocked the road for more than a week, and while damage like this is unusual, he says it's not surprising.
"I've been in this business for 43 years, so it wasn't my first time seeing this sort of destruction,” Harkins says.
Craig Heighton is Georgia Transmission Corporation’s director of external affairs. He says even though big towers like this coming completely down is rare, they were prepared for it.
"We had some momentary outages, but we were able to isolate the problem, reroute the power, and restore power very quickly,” he says. “Now, we're just working on restoring these structures.”
Heighton says that the damage adds up to about $2.5 million. However, over 100 crew members from Georgia Power are here working each day to make the repairs.
"I think it's a testament to the hard work that goes into ensuring that when folks flip the switch, the light go on,” Heighton says.
Monday, crews cleared the last of the wreckage. Each tower takes around three to four days to build. Now they just need to run the new lines. Georgia Transmission Corporation says that repairs will likely be done in the next couple of weeks.