Tropical Storm Zeta buzz-sawed through North Georgia Thursday, killing at least three people, knocking out power to nearly 1 million homes and postponing early voting and COVID-19 testing across the Atlanta region.
Making landfall Wednesday afternoon as a Category 2 hurricane, Zeta lashed the Louisiana coast with 110 mph winds. It weakened to a tropical storm by the time it reached North Georgia, with winds gusting between 51 mph in Atlanta and 55 mph in Rome early in the morning. The worst of it tore through the region between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m.
A Gwinnett County couple and a Cherokee man were killed when trees came crashing into their homes. Georgia Power reported outages for more than 613,000 customers statewide. About 364,000 Georgia EMC customers were temporarily without power, the majority of those in metro Atlanta.
Early voting was postponed in at least 16 Georgia counties Thursday because of storm damage and power outages. The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia called for counties to extend voting hours Thursday.
Voters should be ready for long lines during the final days of the election as turnout continues to rise, said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. He said he asked Georgia Power to prioritize restoring power in areas with polling places.
“We don’t see there will be an overall impact to voting at this time,” Raffensperger said. “We still have early voting for the balance of (Thursday and Friday) and obviously the full election on Tuesday.”
At the Ponce de Leon Branch Library in Fulton County, about 200 voters were sent to different voting locations early in the day, said Jean D’Amico, a poll watcher for the Democratic Party of Georgia.
“We were without power and have been without power the whole day,” D’Amico said. “It would be nice to have some sort of backup plan or generator, but you can’t really do anything about the weather.”
Four Cobb County early voting locations remained closed Thursday afternoon. Among them was the Smyrna Community Center. A line of voters snaked around it, despite its loss of power. People at the front of the line said poll workers were updating them about once an hour, telling them the location would open as soon as power was restored. Piere Guyton, who had been waiting for hours there, said he was nervous about leaving and then being forced to wait at another location.
“I’m just stubborn,” he said.
At Cobb’s main elections office in Marietta, the wait hovered around 90 minutes for most of the day. Brittany and Marcus Haynes cast their ballots after dodging downed trees and visiting two other Cobb polling places that lost power.
“I’m not going to lie, it almost defeated us,” Brittany Haynes said. “But we made it happen.”
At the Sandy Springs Regional Library in the afternoon, the power was on and there was no line to vote. Jillian Spear arrived there from Chastain Park, where she said the polls were closed because of the storm. Spear worries about other voters who may not have found an alternative site like her.
“I hope that it gets fixed soon just because it’s inhibiting people from being able to vote,” she said.
Zeta also impacted COVID-19 testing sites and public schools in metro Atlanta. Fulton’s testing sites announced they would delay opening until noon Thursday. Meanwhile, Fulton, Cherokee and Cobb’s public school systems called off classes Friday because of the storm.
Across the metro area, fallen trees and downed wires temporarily blocked interstates, disabled traffic signals and shut down surface streets. In Gwinnett, one person was taken to a hospital to be checked for injuries after a tree fell on a house on Smoke Hill Lane in the Hoschton area, county authorities said.
DeKalb County officials fielded calls about more than 50 trees down across roadways, including multiple locations on I-20, and several damaged traffic signals.
At least four Atlanta families were rescued after trees fell on their homes or vehicles, city fire officials said. On Brookview Drive in northwest Atlanta, a fallen tree trapped a man in his third-floor bedroom. He became pinned between the tree, the bed and the floor, city fire spokesman Sgt. Cortez Stafford said.
Southwest Atlanta resident Jennifer Winfrey was sitting in her den when the wind picked up about 4:30 a.m. She closed her eyes and prayed for protection for her family and neighbors on Beecher Road.
“The next thing I heard was, ‘Crack. Crack. Boom,’” she said.
Her neighbor’s mature tree uprooted and fell in her yard, missing her house but crushing her late father’s Ford F-150. The truck held sentimental value for Winfrey. As a child, the sight of the old pickup coming up the road meant everything was going to be all right, she said.
“The loss of human life and time — that’s something you can’t get back,” she said. “But the car, we can replace that.”
Staff writers Shaddi Abusaid, Ben Brasch, Tyler Estep, Arielle Kass, Henri Hollis and Ada Wood and photojournalist John Spink contributed to this article.
