Posted at 11:01 a.m. Friday, Sept. 17

As of 10 a.m. Friday, approximately 2,300 North Georgia Electric Membership Corp. customers are still without power after Hurricane Ivan, now a tropical depression, moved into the area yesterday afternoon.

Crews have worked through the night and into the morning restoring outages caused primarily from fallen trees and power lines.

Outages that remain include approximately 1,700 customers in Catoosa and Walker counties, about 100 customers in

Murray and Whitfield counties, 500 customers in Chattooga County, and about five customers in Gordon County.

We expect outage reports to continue throughout the day as a result of wind gusts and heavy ground saturation," said Laura Sparks, vice president of marketing and economic development. "Crews will continue to work around the clock until all power is restored."

Sparks said NGEMC is trying to identify all isolated outages that might remain on its seven county system.

"We especially need customers to call us if their power is still out while others in their area have been restored," Sparks said.

Since Ivan entered the Northwest Georgia area around 4 p.m. Thursday, approximately 8,500 NGEMC customers have experienced outages.

NGEMC continues to urge extreme caution around fallen trees and power lines. Please report these immediately and do not go near them.

NGEMC is a power distributor that serves more than 94,000 customers in a seven-county area that includes Catoosa, Chattooga, Floyd, Gordon,Murray, Walker and Whitfield counties.

Flooding and wind gusts continue to hamper restoration efforts, and NGEMC urges customers still without power to call to report these outages to their local NGEMC offices: Fort Oglethorpe,866-2231; Calhoun, 629-3160; Trion 734-7341; Dalton 259-9441.

Submitted by NGEMC.