Fannin County residents woke up to downed trees, flooding and a lack of power Thursday, October 29, as a result of Tropical Storm Zeta, which hit the coast of Louisiana as a Category 2 Hurricane before downgrading to a Tropical Storm and traveling northeast toward Fannin County.
Following the storm, Fannin County Board of Commissioners declared that a local state of emergency existed that required “extraordinary and immediate corrective acts for the protection of the health of the citizens of Fannin.”
Following the declaration, Fannin County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) activated the county’s Emergency Operations Plan and the county’s emergency management ordinances were operative.
According to EMA Director Robert Graham, there were no deaths or serious injuries as a result of the storm. However, emergency services personnel did have to rescue a couple after a tree fell on their home.
Trees across roadways and on cars created an inability for many to travel as well.
“We had a lot of trees across roadways and power lines down,” Graham said. “We had to respond to a lot of arcing power lines and things like that. A couple of trees fell on cars. The main thing was just the inability for people to get where they needed to go because of trees blocking a lot of roadways.”
Thousands of Fannin County residents lost power as a result of the storm. According to Chuck Thomas with Tri-State EMC, they had a little over 15,000 meters out following the storm.
The EMC services 19,895 meters.
By Friday morning, Tri-State had restored power to the majority of their meters, but still had over 3,000 meters out.
As of Monday morning, November 2, 522 meters were still out of power.
Graham explained that emergency services received multiple calls from people who needed help with home oxygen and concentrators due to a lack of power, stating, “One lady, we had to help get her portable oxygen working for her, and another one we took a bottle of oxygen out to, to supply her temporary oxygen while her power was out.”