Ralph K. Montgomery, 75, of Demorest, Georgia passed away on Sunday, January 2, 2022.
Ralph’s wishes were to be cremated and no formal services are planned at this time.
Arrangements have been entrusted to the Whitfield Funeral Homes & Crematory, at 1370 Industrial Boulevard, Baldwin, Georgia 30511. Telephone: 706-778-7123.
Georgia Power and regional electric cooperatives have restored power to most of their customers left in the dark by Monday’s windy winter storm. Approximately three thousand remained without power Tuesday evening, mostly in White and Rabun counties.
Crews worked have been working nonstop to get the lights and heat back on across Georgia following the storm. The state’s largest utility said it would have service fully restored by the end of Tuesday.
Georgia Power released a statement saying its “crews in the field have worked through the night to complete restoration. The remaining outages in east and northeast Georgia will be restored today [Jan. 4].”
HEMC has not given a timeline for full restoration, but the local cooperative has made progress, restoring service to around 13,000 members in its six-county service area. The vast majority of HEMC’s remaining outages are in White County where a large number of trees fell.
The power outages began shortly after 4 a.m. January 3 as winds gusted between 40 to 50 mph. An official reading near Dahlonega clocked one gust at 49 mph.
The storm left a trail of damage across northern Georgia, toppling trees, downing power lines and blocking roadways. Flooding from heavy rains forced several bridges to close in Habersham County.
Several state highways in the region were temporarily blocked by fallen trees, a large number of them in the Sautee Nacoochee area where many residents remained without power Tuesday.
Five homes in White County were damaged by fallen trees, but there were no injuries reported, according to White County Public Safety Director David Murphy.
Cleanup shifted on Tuesday from making roads passable to clearing debris. As big of a mess as the storm left, the biggest impact was by far the power outages.
The storm broke 30 HEMC power poles, which significantly slowed restoration efforts. At the height of the storm, over 45% of HEMC’s members were without electricity.
There are still downed trees and power lines across parts of northern Georgia and electric providers remind the public to remain vigilant. Avoid downed lines and cables and treat all lines as if they are energized.
SEE ALSO
Winter storm passes, leaving snow on the ground in higher elevations
Last updated 1/4/2022 @ 8:15am
Editor’s Note: A recent town hall meeting in Habersham County revealed a number of public safety issues affecting the county. Over the next several weeks, Now Habersham will take a closer look at these issues and their impact on public safety personnel and the community at large. This is the first article in that series.
There’s a problem in Habersham County with cows, and other large livestock, striking out on their own for strolls outside their pastures. While it might sound like just another charm of rural Georgia, escaped cows are risks to the safety of Habersham’s drivers, farmers and public safety.
“We have a big problem . . . with cows escaping their pastures and getting into roadways,” Habersham County Animal Care and Control Director Madi Nix says. “Because we are a very rural area, this is more common than one might think.”
“The Cow Problem” is a problem animal control doesn’t handle alone. The sheriff’s office is usually involved with, too, as the departments work in tandem to corral wandering cows and other livestock.
“We deal with cows and other livestock all the time,” Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell says. “Dispatch has a ‘cow’ book with names of folks who own animals in areas of the county.”
Nix says this issue happens most often with black cows, which are hard to see and pose a threat to the safety of Habersham drivers.
“Some of the issues that we’ve had with livestock or with cows, in particular, is the immediate danger of somebody hitting one of these animals,” Nix says. “Either in the night or coming around the corner on that can be deadly. If somebody hits a cow in a vehicle, it’s a lot different than hitting a dog, per se.”
Habersham County Animal Control staff corral cows with HCACC vehicles off of a roadway. (Madi Nix/HCACC)
It isn’t just the safety of drivers, escaped cows are often bulls who are on edge, and are a safety risk to the animal control staff and officers dealing with them. That escaped livestock can also wreak havoc on other citizens’ farms, especially those with crops.
“We also have a big issue with folks that do hold these livestock not taking us seriously when officers are making contact in regards to the violation,” Nix says. “We get a lot of ‘It’s a cow, this is farmland, get over it.’ But not only are people’s lives in danger when they [cows] get into the roadway, but we have had citizens that rely on crops that have had their crops destroyed by neighbors’ cattle roaming onto their property.”
Nix says that usually, the cow is claimed and brought back to its pasture fairly quickly. But sometimes, it’s hard to track down the owner, even with the “cow book.”
“Every now and then we can’t find an owner and cow won’t stay out of the road,” Terrell says. “[The] last resort is getting with Madi and doing something with it.”
Nix and Terrell have had to work together to get a cow into a rented trailer and take it to a pasture where it could stay until it was reclaimed. The county’s shelter and animal control facilities don’t have a paddock or a transport vehicle for livestock, even though it’s an issue Nix says they deal with on a regular basis.
“The sheriff’s department nor animal control has the time or the ability to sit and babysit a cow for six hours while we make sure he tries not to get into the road,” Nix says. What the responders often have to do in that situation is take the cow to a nearby pasture and ask the property owner to keep the cow during a holding period.
“If within that holding time the owner is not found, if whatever animal that person has been holding for us wants to keep it, we’ll go ahead and do a transfer to that person,” she says.
Nix is hopeful that the county’s new animal shelter, which is included in the current SPLOST budget, will have an area for livestock to wait to be reclaimed.
Nix and Terrell both say that if you do spot a cow, or any other type of livestock out wandering in the roads, call the non-emergency dispatch line at (706) 839-0570. Do not call 911.
“When someone sees a cow or animal out [in the road] they should call dispatch and report it,” Terrell says. “If they know the owner, it would be great if they contacted them too.”
By reaching out to the non-emergency dispatch line, E-911 operators will be able to dispatch whichever sheriff’s officer or animal control officer is closest to deal with the lost livestock. Nix says if there’s lost livestock on your property, calling animal control directly at (706) 839-0195 is a better method of contact.
Jaybo Shaw, the football coach who has led Rabun County to three region titles with Gunner Stockton as his quarterback, is moving to Jesup to take the Wayne County job.
Shaw’s Rabun County teams were 35-5 with two quarterfinal finishes and one semifinal in Class 2A. Stockton, who has signed with Georgia, set the state record for career touchdown passes.
Wayne County, a southeast Georgia school in Class 5A, won region titles as recently as 2017 and 2018 in its first two seasons under Ken Cribb but bottomed out in 2021, finishing 0-9. Six of the losses came against top-10 teams.
Shaw is a former all-state quarterback at Flowery Branch who played at Georgia Southern and Georgia Tech. He became a head coach for the first time in 2018, succeeding his father, Lee Shaw, who was Jaybo’s high school coach.
WJCL-TV in Savannah was the first to report the news of Shaw’s hire at Wayne County.
Produced by Georgia High School Football Daily. To sign up for GHSF’s free email newsletter click here.
The Alto Police Department has been awarded a car seat mini-grant to provide car seats to families facing financial difficulty.
Through the mini-grant from the Georgia Department of Public Health Injury Prevention Program, Banks County Emergency Management and the Alto Police Department will work together to provide car seats and education to financially eligible families in Banks County.
“It’s our responsibility to keep our children safe,” said Alto Police Chief Josh Ivey. “The car seat mini-grant is a great opportunity to help our community and help protect our children from serious injuries or death in motor vehicle crashes.”
The program, funded by the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, was created to make sure Georgia’s children are safe while riding in cars. They awarded the Georgia DPH a total of $2,066,100 to provide technical assistance and resources to first responders statewide, develop community support for motor vehicle safety programs, support data linkages and help evaluate program efforts.
“This unique partnership between highway safety and public health helps promote a safer Georgia,” Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, said in a press release. “This programmatic support has made a difference and continues to save lives and prevent injuries.”
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, car seats reduce fatal injuries by 71 percent among infants and by 54 percent among children ages 1 to 4 years in cars. They say that car seats offer the best protection for children in the event of a crash, and they are most effective when installed and used correctly. Nearly three out of every four car seats are not used properly, placing children at unnecessary risk.
The Georgia DPH reports that since 2007, the education, car seats and booster seats provided through the mini-grant have prevented serious injury or death and saved 385 of Georgia’s children who were involved in crashes.
$1,257,375 of that funding has been allocated to the DPH Injury Prevention Program’s Child Occupant Safety Project, which provides car seats and education through the car seat mini-grant program. The program assists more than 130 counties state-wide.
Banks County Emergency Management and the Alto Police Department will educate parents and caregivers on how to properly install and use car seats, offer car seat inspections and provide car seats and booster seats to financially eligible families through the program.
For more information about the Banks car seat program, contact the Alto Police Department at 706-778-8028.
If you would like information regarding other counties involved in the program, please contact the Georgia Department of Public Health’s Child Occupant Safety Project via email at [email protected] or by calling 404-463-1487.
The Athens-Clarke County Police Department is investigating a Monday afternoon shooting incident where a 23-year-old man was shot.
Monday around 11:37 a.m., the Athens-Clarke County Police Department responded to a report of a shooting in the 300 block of Morning Drive.
When ACCPD officers arrived on the scene, they found a 23-year-old man who had been shot. He was transported by EMS with non-life-threatening injuries and is expected to recover.
The ACCPD’s initial investigation into the incident shows that the shooting took place at a residence in the 300 block of Stonehenge Way. They believe that the man that was shot ran to the Morning Drive area.
The ACCPD encourages anyone with information regarding this incident to contact Detective Harrison at 762-400-7361 or via email at [email protected].
WASHINGTON (GA Recorder) — In a sternly worded letter to other senators, the New York Democrat set a deadline of Jan. 17 for the chamber to consider revising the filibuster rules, which require a 60-vote threshold for legislation to move ahead in the evenly divided Senate.
Jan. 17 is also Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
“We must ask ourselves: if the right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, then how can we in good conscience allow for a situation in which the Republican Party can debate and pass voter suppression laws at the State level with only a simple majority vote, but not allow the United States Senate to do the same?” Schumer wrote in the letter.
It’s unlikely that enough Senate Republicans will join Democrats to pass the current versions of voting rights legislation.
Another sticking point for Schumer is that not all Democrats are on board either with reforming or pushing for a carve out of filibuster rules.
Georgia U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock has been a vocal supporter of changing the filibuster rules for debate on voting protections; U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff has said he’s open to it, too.
With the midterm elections approaching, congressional Democrats have without success pushed for enactment of broad voter rights protections. Since the 2020 presidential election, Republicans at the state level, including in Georgia, have introduced hundreds of bills that would impose strict voting requirements, in response to former President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the presidential election.
Schumer argued that with the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol this week, Congress needs to understand that the attack “was a symptom of a broader illness — an effort to delegitimize our election process, and the Senate must advance systemic democracy reforms to repair our republic or else the events of that day will not be an aberration — they will be the new norm.”
“Given the urgency of the situation and imminence of the votes, we as Senate Democrats must urge the public in a variety of different ways to impress upon their Senators the importance of acting and reforming the Senate rules, if that becomes a perquisite for action to save our democracy,” he said.
Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked debate on a voting rights bill. Only one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, said in November that she would back Senate Democrats in a compromise voting rights measure named after a civil rights icon, the late Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.
In his letter, Schumer did not specify which voting rights bill the Senate aims to pass — Democrats have introduced several.
But Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has spent the last few months working on a package that has the support of West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin III, a Democrat who has expressed his opposition to changing the Senate’s rules.
The same stance is shared by Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who opposes any type of filibuster reform.
“As she has throughout her time in the U.S. House and Senate, Senator Sinema also continues to support the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, to protect the country from repeated radical reversals in federal policy which would cement uncertainty, deepen divisions, and further erode Americans’ confidence in our government,” her office wrote in a statement, the same one she made in December in response to questions about her position on the filibuster.
The bill backed by Klobuchar, known as the Freedom to Vote Act, has the support of every Senate Democrat, including Sinema.
The legislation would establish Election Day as a national holiday and set minimum standards that each state must have for elections, such as two weeks of early voting and an option for same-day voter registration. Manchin has vowed to get 10 Senate Republicans on board, but so far has not succeeded.
States Newsroom reporter Jacob Fischler contributed to this report.
Major happenings in health care didn’t cease over the holidays.
The news, in fact, exploded – in both familiar and surprising directions, including an unusual twist in the Northside Hospital vs. Anthem contract dispute.
It started, of course, with the latest on the Covid-19 pandemic.
The state last week reported daily totals of new Covid cases that shattered previous records, with the very contagious Omicron variant spreading fast. And those state numbers didn’t count the people who tested positive for the virus at home but who didn’t report their infections.
The latest surge also sparked a combined announcement Wednesday from six major metro Atlanta hospital systems, which said they had seen 100 percent to 200 percent increases in COVID-19 hospitalizations in the past eight days. “The vast majority of inpatients are unvaccinated,’’ the statement said.
The announcement – accompanied by a plea from hospitals that people not use ERs to get Covid tests — continued the joint work on fighting Covid that these systems have pursued over the course of the pandemic.
On Monday, Grady Memorial Hospital reported treating 239 patients with Covid – the Atlanta safety-net provider’s highest virus number since the pandemic began.
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta said Monday it had 102 patients hospitalized due to Covid – also a high for that system. Of these children, 74% had at least one pre-existing medical condition, said Children’s Healthcare. “This is the highest number of children with Covid-19 in our system to date, but we have three hospitals in our system with sufficient capacity to see and treat patients,’’ said the pediatric system.
Piedmont Healthcare, on the other hand, said it’s seeing big increases in Covid patients but not to the level of its recent September hospitalization peak.
State officials also are reporting an astonishingly high rate of nearly 30 percent of Georgians who got a recent PCR test showing an infection. And the Georgia Department of Public Health said Monday it would not report daily numbers “due to a large amount of data overwhelming the system.”
The spread in metro Atlanta has forced school systems to return to remote learning for students to begin the January semester.
Late last week, Northside Hospital announced a temporary reprieve in its contract battle with insurance giant Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. The Atlanta-based health system said it had been granted an injunction in Fulton County Superior Court that averted a Jan. 1 termination of the contract.
Northside Hospital Atlanta
Northside cited a new Georgia law (House Bill 454), which includes a provision saying that during a public health emergency, an insurer is prohibited from ending such a contract.
So, at least for the moment, hundreds of thousands of Georgia patients with Anthem insurance will remain in-network if they go to Northside providers.
MORE: Patients stranded out of network as contract talks collapse
Northside said it would continue its discussions with Anthem. “With the Covid-19 Omicron variant now surging through U.S. and Georgia, Anthem’s decision to remove Northside from its networks defied both logic and sensitivity,” Northside said in a statement.
Anthem, meanwhile, said in a statement that the court order extends the current Northside pact only until Feb. 1.
“Continuing the current contract will not achieve the affordability or quality improvements we have been seeking from Northside, which is why we will not stop our good-faith negotiation efforts until we reach an agreement that is in the best interests of consumers,’’ said Anthem spokeswoman Christina Gaines.
State Rep. Mark Newton, an Augusta physician who was the lead sponsor of HB 454, said Monday that “this current contract dispute illustrates precisely the need for our recent bill protecting patients.”
Newton
Newton, a Republican, added that the Legislature “has worked to be sure individual patients are not crushed’’ in such contract battles.
“Georgia families can continue to receive their health care from trusted doctors and hospitals at affordable, in-network rates.”
Northside was not among the six metro Atlanta systems reporting the large hospitalization increases. Still, Katherine Watson, a spokeswoman, said Monday that Northside has seen a 221% increase in patients in the last two weeks alone.
The numbers are still increasing, she added.
After Sunday night’s storms, many of Northeast Georgia’s powerlines sustained serious damage. Many are still in the process of being repaired— and one is on Toccoa Highway.
The highway, where several Habersham County Government offices are located, runs parallel to the Habersham County Fairgrounds, Administration Building, Animal Shelter, Public Works Department and Ruby Fulbright Aquatic Center. Due to the repairs, the road has been partially blocked off and traffic is being diverted through the Ruby Fulbright Aquatic Center parking lot.
Habersham County Emergency Management will be on-site to help with traffic.
The county asks drivers moving through this area to slow down, especially through the aquatic center’s parking lot, where children will be loading and unloading from cars for sports practices.
If you are going to be parking at the aquatic center tonight, for your safety and for continued traffic flow, the county advises parking behind the aquatic center.
Jerry Harkness is now officially the mayor of Demorest after his election in November.
Harkness won the municipal election against former Demorest Fire Cheif Ken Rannali months ago, and as of Monday night, he has taken the mayoral position for the city. The position was previously held by Rick Austin, who did not run for reelection in 2021.
Roy Andrew Ferguson was also sworn in Monday night. Ferguson will now take his seat on the city council after defeating incumbent councilman Jim Welborn in the November election by just seven votes.
Both were sworn in by Habersham Judge Chan Claudell.
Demorest councilmembers and former councilman Welborn attended Monday night’s swearing in ceremony.
“I appreciate everyone coming out tonight,” Harkness said. “I appreciate our councilmembers [and] our former councilmembers for being here tonight; I appreciate everyone coming out to share their support.”
Harkness made his first offical act as mayor after his swearing in: adjorning the city’s meeting.
The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the use of a Pfizer-BioNTech booster in adolescents 12 to 15 years old.
The agency on Monday also shortened the time between the completion of primary vaccination of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and a booster dose to five months from six.
And, the FDA allowed for a third dose of vaccine in immunocompromised children 5 to 11 years of age.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, must still weigh in with a recommendation on the FDA’s announcement before the changes can take effect.
“Throughout the pandemic, as the virus that causes COVID-19 has continuously evolved, the need for the FDA to quickly adapt has meant using the best available science to make informed decisions with the health and safety of the American public in mind,” said Acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock.
The FDA said it reached its decision after reviewing data from Israel, which included information on 6,300 people ages 12-15 who received a booster shot at least five months after their initial two-dose vaccination. The data showed no new cases of two possible side effects that had been observed in some young people who received the vaccine — myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, and pericarditis, an inflammation of the saclike tissue surrounding the heart.
The CDC recommended the Pfizer vaccine for children 12-15 in May and for kids 5-11 in November. There is still no vaccine authorized in the U.S. for children under age 5.
(GA Recorder) — A Louisiana federal judge has put a hold on President Joe Biden’s mandate that Head Start workers be vaccinated against COVID-19.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, who previously ruled against a vaccine mandate for health care workers, issued a preliminary injunction on New Year’s Day restricting the executive branch from enforcing in 24 states a mandate for Head Start, a federal pre-K program for low-income families.
The mandate called for all employees, volunteers and contractors with Head Start to be fully vaccinated by the end of January. Children under 5 who attend the program are not yet eligible to be vaccinated and at risk of COVID-19 infections.
A group of 24 Republican state attorneys general, led by Louisiana’s Jeff Landry and including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio and Tennessee, challenged the mandate last month.
“Another win in our fight against the Biden administration’s unconstitutional mandates and a victory for our early care and learning classrooms!” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said on Twitter. “Georgia’s children and their families deserve better than government dictating their lives and choices.”
Doughty, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, expressed skepticism about the federal government’s ability to contain the pandemic, including through vaccine mandates.
“In the immortal words of President Ronald Reagan the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help,’” he wrote in the order’s second paragraph. “In order to help rid the United States of the COVID-19 virus, the government has imposed four vaccine mandates,” including the one for Head Start.
Still, he said the decision was not about the wisdom of the mandate, but the constitutional separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.
Executive agencies “DO NOT have the power to impose the Head Start Mandate” without an act of Congress, he wrote.
Doughty’s order will remain in effect until the final resolution of the case or by orders in his court or by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments Friday on whether the order invalidating a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers and the vaccine mandate for health care workers should stay in place.
Medical experts have urged vaccinations as the best method of preventing COVID-19. White House Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci told NBC News last month that the “real problem” with the current omicron variant wave was that many people eligible for vaccines have not received them.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, fewer than two-thirds of U.S. residents 5 and older are fully vaccinated, and only about one-third of those who are fully vaccinated have received a booster dose that is now recommended.
In Georgia, a little more than half the population is vaccinated. Only about 28% have gone on to receive a booster so far.
In addition to his ruling on the health care workers mandate, Doughty also struck down Biden’s pause of new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters last year, a major setback for the president’s climate change agenda.
Although he considers himself conservative, Doughty has said he does not consider politics when making judicial decisions.
Trump appointed Doughty in 2017 and the U.S. Senate approved him, 98-0, the following year.
The White House referred a request for comment to the Department of Health and Human Services. Representatives for HHS did not immediately respond.
