ATLANTA - More than 230,000 customers had no electricity Sunday in Georgia while crews worked to repair power lines snapped by an ice storm, but the city's airport reopened all its runways as temperatures rose above freezing.
Two traffic deaths in Georgia and one in South Carolina were blamed on the storm that spread sleet and freezing rain across parts of the Southeast Saturday.
By Sunday, all four runways at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport were operational again. Only two — and at one point only one — of its four runways were available Saturday as crews labored to scrape off ice.
"There still isn't enough demand to have all four operating, but it's much easier today to maintain four runways," airport spokeswoman Lanii Thomas said, adding that about 300 airline passengers spent the night at the airport because their flights were canceled.
Thick blankets of ice began melting Sunday as temperatures climbed above freezing. Highs reached the 40s for northern Georgia and the 60s in the southern part of the state.
Even with the improved weather conditions, fewer than 100 departures were scheduled Sunday morning, Thomas said.
AirTran expected operations to return to normal by early afternoon, and Delta planned to offer 70 percent of its normal schedule Sunday.
The icy weather also forced airlines to cancel scores of flights Saturday at airports in Greenville-Spartanburg and Columbia, S.C., and at Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C.
In North Carolina, power was restored to 9,000 customers who had been blacked out. Utility officials in South Carolina estimated about 5,000 customers were still in the dark Sunday, down from 11,000 on Saturday.
