EDIT (12:35 a.m.): According to Georgia Power's website, service will be restored in River Green before 2:30 a.m. Tuesday.
UPDATE (12:30 a.m., Tuesday): Power has gone out in the River Green subdivision. The lights went out shortly after midnight Tuesday. Georgia Power has informed affected customers that service will be restored by 6:15 a.m.
ORIGINAL STORY: Roughly 4,000 Georgia Power customers are without power after a downed tree disrupted the power grid in the Canton area on Monday evening.
A spokesman with Georgia Power confirmed to Canton-Sixes Patch that the massive power outages in the Riverstone Parkway area were caused by the downing of a tree in the Waleska Road/Shoal Creek area.
The spokesman also confirmed that 4,000 customers are currently without power, but Georgia Power crews are in the area working to restore power.
Canton Police Chief Robert Merchant told Patch he has heard that a car and the tree made contact, though he is not sure if the tree fell on the car or if the car hit the tree. Regardless, a mother and a small child sustained non life-threatening injuries in the incident and have been trasported to Northside Hospital-Cherokee.
Merchant confirmed that three police units are currently on Highway 140 rerouting traffic between Riverstone and Reinhardt College parkways.
Merchant has heard from Georgia Power that it will take at least 30 minutes for crews to assess the situation and begin work.
The Georgia Department of Transportation has contacted the tree removal service to remove the tree from Highway 140. However, Merchant has been told by Canton Fire Chief Dean Floyd that the tree in question is approximately 36 inches across and will take some time to remove.
"It will be back to normal sooner rather than later, but it will still take some time," Merchant told Patch.
If you don't have photos of what was going on don't publish photos that were taken by someone's grandchild out the window of the car of the pretty pretty flashey lights or owwwwww look grandma the back of a firetruck in the dark.
Thanks for your comment. When I originally wrote the story, I called the mayor, the city manager, the chief of police, and Georgia Power. At that time, nobody had any concrete information, it was basically "a tree fell, the power is out, someone got hurt." Georgia Power's media people didn't even know about the transformers going out and didn't seem interested when I told them that our readers had said that at least four transformers had blown out. As for the user pictures, I asked folks to contribute their photographs to the article. They may not be the most amazing photos in the world, but they allow readers to become reporters and share what they're seeing with their neighbors. Additionally, the "back of a firetruck in the dark" photograph also has a giant tree straddling the road, in case you missed that. The updates for River Green were again, prompted by reader feedback. I'm sure there are plenty of people in that subdivision that were interested in knowing when their power was going to be restored. Thanks for the comment. -Justin
I shouldn't have been so harsh, but it seemed that the story was pointed at one subdivision, when the incident actually happened next to one of the poorest areas of the City, and more of those homes were out of power than the subdivision (as well as Riverstone businesses). News tends to report things that happen in middle or upper class areas and pretend like the poor areas don't exist. I do apologize for being so critical.