Columbus weathers the storm: Irma left trees snapped and thousands without power

The Chattahoochee Valley braced for the worst Monday, preparing to come head-to-head with a storm some speculated could be larger and more intense than when Hurricane Opal blasted through Columbus in 1995.

Hurricane Irma moved northwest from Florida Monday morning, making its slow and ominous journey up the peninsula, through south Georgia and finally making a beeline straight for Columbus and the Valley.

It pelted the city with rain, wind and gloom for hours, left about 30,000 in Columbus and more than a million in Georgia without power, tore trees from their roots and lashed buildings with punishing winds. Alabama wasn’t spared — the Phenix City and Eufuala area saw about 12,000 power outages as well.

School systems closed, governments and most businesses shut down, and citizens were told to stay off the roads as emergency crews, working overtime, waited for the dangerous weather to let up.

Through it all, hundreds of evacuees from Florida and other parts of Georgia hunkered down in hotels, with area families or in one of the two Red Cross shelters set up in the city. Citizens came together to donate thousands of pounds of disaster relief supplies and gave hundreds of volunteer hours to care for the families alongside the Red Cross.

The storm moved away from the area Tuesday, weakening to a post-tropical cyclone. Flash-flood watches were still in effect for parts of the southern Appalachians, but Columbus and the Valley saw little more than a drizzle as Irma dispersed. Wind speeds dropped to 10 mph, down from gusts as high as 53 mph, and are expected to remain at normal levels.

The worst fears for Irma in the Valley — of widespread devastation and weeks-long power-outages — were never realized. Wind gusts peaked at 53 mph, still dangerously high but less than the 65-75 mph range many thought could wreak widespread havoc.

That doesn’t mean the storm wasn’t a beast. In Florida, the Keys, Naples, Miami and other areas face a grueling cleanup process as they work to clean up damage and return power to millions of homes. Three deaths were linked to the storm in Georgia, with more killed in Florida and dozens killed in the Caribbean.

In the Valley, Irma ripped trees out of the ground, sending power lines tumbling and leaving roads impassable. At least one woman was injured after a fallen tree struck her car on River Road. Across town, other trees fell on houses, smaller saplings were snatched out of the dirt, and large limbs and branches littered the ground. Nearly 6,000 were still without power in Muscogee and Harris counties Tuesday morning.

Now, the focus shifts on what to do next. Hundreds of evacuees remain in Columbus and will begin the process of returning home over the next few days. It’s not entirely clear yet what awaits them.

“I don’t think it got flooded,” said one evacuee of her apartment complex. “The parking lot I think is flooded. I don’t think my apartment did.”

Georgia Power said it is working to restore power as quickly as possible for thousands of Georgian still without electricity, and the United Way asked citizens to indicate whether they’d be willing to aid their neighbors by helping cut up trees, providing tarps, or helping in some other way. At least one Good Samaritan has already done so, and others will likely join the effort today.

Some businesses, governments and schools — including the Muscogee County School District, the Columbus Consolidated Government and Columbus State University — will remain closed Tuesday, but other businesses and organizations are beginning to open again.

Mayor Teresa Tomlinson asked citizens to remain cautious while driving on the roads today. “There are trees and other debris in the road and there may yet be branches to fall,” she said. The much more mild weather, however, will “allow us to enter the recovery stage of clean-up and returning folks to full service.”

This story was originally published September 12, 2017 at 7:53 AM with the headline "Columbus weathers the storm: Irma left trees snapped and thousands without power."