ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp activated the National Guard on Saturday, deploying 120 Guard members to the northeast corner of the state where some of the biggest impacts of the winter storm were expected.
Channel 2’s Richard Elliot spoke exclusively with one of the commanders of the Georgia National Guard, Brigadier General Jason Fryman from his post in Marietta.
“It’s Georgians helping Georgians,” Brig. Gen. Fryman said.
Their engineering assets will work to clear roads and help electric companies get to downed power lines. He said they were in place and ready to go.
We’ve put our folks out. We’ve kind of pre-staged everybody and got everybody set to ride out the storm in those areas that we think are going to be most affected,” Brig Gen. Fryman said.
State Meteorologist Will Lanxton said dealing with ice is a whole different ballgame than snow.
He joined GEMA Director Josh Lamb and others warning what will be hitting north Georgia over the next several hours.
Freezing rain will be turning roads into skating rinks and weighing down trees and powerlines.
“Ice, you can’t do anything with it. You can’t drive on it. It’s much more likely to take out trees and power lines than just regular snow is, just because it’s so much heavier,” Lanxton said.
Lamb warned people across north Georgia to get home, stay home and be prepared to hunker down for a couple of days
We recommend that you be in place and plan to stay there for the next 48 hours,” he said. “We strongly encourage everyone in the warning and advisory areas to stay off the roads tonight, tomorrow and Monday morning.”
Even when the storm passes, the roads will remain icy since the temperatures will stay below freezing for the first of the week.
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