MOULTRIE, Ga. — People across Colquitt County need to continue to stay off the streets going into Friday as cleaning is stalled until daylight.

Power line poles were split, and trees fell to the ground and on houses during a tornado that hit Colquitt County midday Thursday. 

Emergency Management Director Russell Moody said damage could’ve been much worse.

“Everybody’s been working since this thing’s been happening. We’ve made a lot of progress in cleanup,” he said. “It’s just going to be getting back with it tomorrow and seeing where it stands as far as residences that have been damaged.”

There’s been no injuries or deaths reported, but cleaning up people’s homes and the streets and recovering downed trees will be the focus for Friday. 

The crews will be working in full force, Moody said, assessing damage and seeing what help people need.

Clean-up couldn’t continue Thursday for loss of daylight and the inability to handle downed power lines.

“A lot of things we can’t clean up because we have to wait for the power company to get in there and get the power lines up,” he said.

Colquitt EMC, Georgia Power and the City of Moultrie Utilities Department have been out all day attempting to remove and repair those downed power lines.

As of 8:16 p.m. Thursday, Colquitt EMC reported 6,033 people affected in the Moultrie service area and Georgia Power reports 51 people affected between two outages.

Moultrie Utilities Department Director Elvira Gibson reported 400 people affected. It’s not all tree damage, she said; some of it is just replacing circuits. Regardless, it’ll take time.

“It will be quite a while before everyone is back on,” Gibson said, explaining repairs might not be done until Friday.

Gibson said the Utilities Department will be sending crews just outside of the city limits to assist people with outages.

“Hopefully that’ll speed along the process but we still estimate that it’s going to be tomorrow before we can get full restoration,” she said.