THOMASVILLE — Officials are preaching residents to make sure they are operating generators safely, after an incident Thursday night nearly killed a family of five.

The generator was not placed under the house, but the carbon monoxide fumes seeped into the home, said Chris Jones, Thomas County emergency management director.

“Generator safety is one of those things we have talked about and talked about and talked about,” he said. 

Said EMS Director Tim Coram: “We came close to losing a whole family.”

Jones also urged people with generators to not attempt running their entire household off the unit without disconnecting it off the transmission line.

“The transformers on the street have no idea which direction the small amount of energy is coming from,” he said, “which means your home generator can be transformed into thousands of volts which can be sent to broken lines and then our linemen are affected by that.”

City of Thomasville Marketing and Communications Director Sheryl Sealy said Thomasville Utilities customers should be prepared to be without power for a few days.

“We do expect to make significant progress today,” she said Friday morning. “Significant damage has occurred to our distribution system, our transmission system and our substations. We are continuing to assess damage. However, these repairs will take several days.

“This will be a multi-day event,” Sealy said. “Customers need to be prepared to be without power for several days. Outlying areas could be without power for one week.”

At the height of the storm, 22 feeders for the electrical system were out but that number was down to five Friday morning. 

Thursday’s priority was to restore power and telecommunications to Archbold Medical Center, and that has been done, Sealy said. 

Sealy also said that if a customer gets a Tville Text Alert message stating their power has been restored but they go home to find it is still out to re-report the outage to 227-5499. Sealy advised customers not to report outages through the city’s website or social media outlets and to refrain from coming to the administrative building to report an outage. Much of the staff there is helping support power restoration efforts.

“We understand people are getting very anxious to get their power restored,” she said. “There’s a lot of damage that is going to take time for us to get back up and running. Just be patient with our staff. We are working as hard we can. There is just a great deal of damage.”

While the city has mutual aid crews from Tennessee and north Georgia on hand, such help is stretched thin because of Hurricane Michael’s effects across the state and the Southeast. 

Grady EMC has 6,100 customers in Thomas County and at the peak outage, nearly 98 percent lost power, Jones said. By Friday, the number of people without power was just over 3,200.

“They have made an improvement,” he said. “Minute by minute, they are bringing additional homes and businesses and families back online.”

All the outlying municipalities, except for Meigs, had power and water service as of Friday morning, Jones said. 

Thomas County Public Works Director Tony Bodiford said all the paved roads are open and about 70 percent of the dirt roads have been cleared. Those residents with debris can take it to the county’s station of Woodruff Farm Road, but construction debris and debris in bags will not be accepted.

Bodiford said the county is working with a debris management firm to help with the effort.

“it’s going to take a long process,” he said. “It will take several weeks to get all this debris cleaned up.”

Sealy said all most city roads were cleaned of debris Thursday and residents who are piling their debris along the road should keep it away from culverts and out of the street. 

Jones said they have received calls from people who have lost food in their freezers and refrigerators because of the power outage. There are 94 people in shelters now and Jones advised people running out of food and water to visit one of the shelters. The Red Cross has established a shelter at New Covenant Church.

The county also is eligible for D-SNAP benefits. People who bought food on food stamps and have lost that food or the food stamps can receive replacement food stamps at the Department of Family and Children Services.

State Rep. Darlene Taylor (R-Thomasville) also said that those needing dialysis can find help through the American Kidney Fund.

Taylor said other southwest Georgia cities have not fared as well as Thomasville and those residents need help and prayers.

“Our neighbors in Bainbridge, Cairo and Camilla have suffered worse than we have,” she said.

Editor Pat Donahue can be reached at (229) 226-2400 ext. 1806.