A line of storms, including two tornadoes, plowed through Georgia early Tuesday, causing wind damage, accidents and knocking out power to 93,000 Georgia Power customers statewide.

As the heavy rains slowed to a drizzle, tens of thousands of Georgia Power customers were still enduring a blackout, mostly in the Atlanta area, according to Carol Boatright, spokeswoman for the electric company.

“There’s actually about 670 customers out in the Carrollton area right now (10 a.m.),” Boatright said. “We have crews out working, but with that many people right now statewide, we’re not giving estimates at this point. We’re down to about 50,000 customers out total, so we’ve cut the number nearly in half.”

Carroll EMC had about 13,000 customers without power at the peak of the storm, according to Susan Lester, vice president of Member Services. The company serves about 30,000 households in Carroll County. At about 11 a.m., 10,000 were still without power.

“Most of the outage has been in Carroll County,” Lester said. “We are restoring it as quickly and safely as possible. We’ve got crews were dispatched right after the storm actually this morning and we’ve got crews coming in that are already here and still others coming from as far away as north Georgia.”

The storm rolled through the county in less than half an hour, unleashing lightning and strong winds which caused damage to transformers and brought down trees and tree limbs causing the power outages.

“The storm entered the county on the western side near the Alabama border,” Carroll County Fire Rescue Chief Gary Thomas said. He said it traveled through “the area of Hill Crest Road and Indian Creek Road, continued east-northeast up Indian Creek Road.”

There were three areas of severe damage - the Smithville area, the Pleasant Hill and Horsely Mill Road area and the area around the Sunset Hills Country Club - according to Tim Padgett, director of the Carroll County Emergency Management Agency.

Despite the major damage in those areas, the county had only three injuries - two requiring hospitalization and one minor injury, Thomas said.

“Within the past week, we’ve had two different tornadoes or severe storms, and it appears both of these actually hit in more rural areas of the county, and that certainly helped to keep our injury and those type numbers down,” he noted.

Two tornados were known to have touched down in Carroll County yesterday. The first, an “EF3” (out of 5), touched down in the Smithfield area, just inside the state line, Padgett said.That tornado left behind a path eight miles long and 100 yards wide with winds estimated at roughly 140 mph.

The second tornado, which touched down on Horsley Mill Road, was an EF1, with winds of 90 mph. It left a swath two miles long and 100 yards wide.

The emergency center was fully manned by 6:45 a.m. this morning, Padgett said, adding that because the shift change was at 7 a.m., emergency personnel were held over while the incoming shift came in. Bowdon, Carrollton and Carroll County public works departments also pitched in clearing roads, and that allowed the county to handle everything on its own, he said.

The Carrollton Police Department was dealing with a lot of problems, many related to the power outage, Capt. Daryl Diamond said. Many of the city’s traffic lights were out thanks to the storm, leading to at least two accidents, one with a minor injury, he said.

“There was a lot of problems; most of them were minor problems,” Diamond said. “It was a continuous going from one call to the next.”

Many of the other calls were checking out debris in the road, trees down or downed power lines, he said. Quite a few were checking out alarms that went off as the power came back on, he added.

Shane Bell, director of West Georgia Ambulance, said responding to a call on Horsely Mill Road was a challenge in the morning.

“We had a lot of trouble getting to, actually to this place because of trees down in the roadway,” he said. “The fire department was trying to get the trees cut where we could get on in there.”

The northern part of the county experienced little damage due to the storm, Padgett said.

Carroll County Schools Coordinator of Public Relations Elena Schulenburg confirmed that fact.

“Villa Rica and all them weren’t even affected by the storm, but then you’ve got Bowdon,” Schulenburg said.

Smithville and Bowdon were some of the areas hardest hit by the storm. In spite of the damage, the county system decided not to close any of its schools, she said.

“If the parents wanted to make the decision not to bring their child to school, we’ve given them grace,” Schulenburg said. “What a lot of people don’t understand about Carroll County Schools is that ... kids were already being picked up at some points when this storm hit.”

Carrollton City Schools faced a similar dilemma.

“It happened at the worst time,” Superintendent Tom Wilson said. “There were buses en route to school, but we felt like the safest thing was to go ahead and take them to school and then contact their parents to come and get them. I was advised around 10 o’clock that all of the students had been transported back home.”

The city system was one of the many consumers without power and decided to close schools for the day.

Oak Mountain Academy also experienced a power interruption because of the storm. It decided to stay open though, Marketing Director Rhyne Owenby said. “I think everybody was here no later than 8:30 a.m.,” she said. “It was just a little hiccup in the day.”

The school didn’t have power for about an hour after the students arrived, she said. Neither Oak Mountain nor county system schools suffered any damage,

administrators said. Carrollton City Schools had minor damage, including downed trees on the campuses and some fence damage around the baseball and softball fields, Wilson said.

Staff writer Drew Pierson contributed to this report.