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E-mailIce shuts down highways, flights in Southeast
Three weather-related traffic deaths were reported, two in Georgia and one in South Carolina, police said.
At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, only one of the four runways was open for much of the day and "very few flights are coming or going," said airport spokeswoman Felicia Browder.
"I don't have an official number of cancellations, but I can say with confidence a significant number have been canceled," Browder said.
AirTran alone canceled 90 flights for the day, said spokesman Tad Hutcheson.
Delta could not provide a number of canceled flights until the end of the day, but had cut its schedule systemwide by about 40 percent in anticipation of the storm, said spokesman Anthony Black.
In South Carolina, Delta, Northwest Airlines, U.S. Airways, and others canceled flights from Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport and from Columbia Metropolitan Airport.
Browder said most travelers in Atlanta were aware of the approaching storm, so few people are stranded at Hartsfield-Jackson.
Not everyone was so lucky. The Atlanta Hawks basketball team spent the night at the airport aboard their chartered airplane, which was waiting to be deiced and then for permission to take off. The team finally gave up yesterday morning and went to a hotel to await word on their scheduled game last night in Memphis against the Grizzlies.
The ice also accumulated on power lines and tree limbs, and at least 109,000 Georgia Power customers were without power yesterday afternoon, about half of them in the Atlanta area, said spokesman Tal Wright.
Georgia Electric Membership Corp. reported 39,000 homes and businesses without power around the state.
The number of Georgia customers without power was expected to grow significantly during the night as ice continued to accumulate, and utilities in the Carolinas made preparations for expected outages, said utility officials.
Throughout the Atlanta metropolitan area, wrecks led police to shut down sections of Interstates 85, 20, 75 and 285 and some other highways during the morning, said state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Karlene Barron. Most were reopened by midday, officials said.
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