Power outages spread across Surry County and the surrounding areas Friday night as trees and limbs fell because of weather-related conditions, and the area saw its second weather-related death in as many weeks.

On Friday night as a 74-year-old Mount Airy man suffered a heart attack while shoveling snow and died, although emergency medical services officials said they could not give out the name of the man.

By Saturday afternoon, between 3,500 and 4,000 people were without power according to Surry County Emergency Services Director John Shelton. Of those numbers, about 1,700 of them were Duke Energy customers. Most of those people were concentrated in the Pilot Mountain area and east into Stokes County.

Duke Energy did not have a specific time frame for restoring power but the company said it could remain out in some areas through Saturday night. Crews worked until 10 p.m. Friday and were back out on the roads by 6:30 Saturday morning.

“The outage numbers have increased significantly,” said Dave Scanzoni, spokesman for Duke Energy. “We do have a large contracting crew out. Yesterday we had about 400 and we’ve doubled that to 800 for Surry, Stokes, Forsyth and Rockingham counties. We have a second group of 800 working in the western part of the state which was hit worse.”

Most of the outages have come from trees and large tree limbs falling on the power lines. Surry County central communications had logged about 300 downed tree calls from when the storm hit on Friday through mid-afternoon Saturday.

To help take care of the tree issues, the NC Forestry Service has sent four teams to the area for yesterday and today. According to Shelton, there are eight forestry workers doing nothing but clearing away downed trees. They are clearing away new falls as well as helping to clean up debris from trees that fell across roadways and were simply moved out of the way.

With the moisture in the ground affecting the root system of trees, Shelton expects more to continue to fall and cause problems. On the heels of ice and snow which blanketed the area Thursday night and Friday, Surry County is under a flood watch as rivers and streams continue to rise.

“We’re praying we don’t get any wind,” said Shelton of the hazards wind could cause with the trees.

Some of the downed trees have fallen on homes and cars, but Shelton said no major damage or injuries were reported. He said that a couple of free-standing metal carports may have been totaled by falling trees but no houses that he had heard.

In addition to downed trees, Lowes Foods in Dobson and the Golden Living Center experiences some issues with leaks. Golden Living Center, which just reopened last month after being closed for a year after water pipes froze and burst there, experienced a small leak in the roof, according to Director Robin Leake.

“We actually have an area in our roof that is like a valley because of the natural line of the roof. There was an accumulation of snow there and it had nowhere to go but through the roof,” she said. “It went into the smoke alarm and it went off like it should have. Everything’s fine.”

No residents were affected by the problem and crews were able to make repairs quickly.

There was a large leak in the ceiling of the Lowes Foods building. However, the store was still open for business on Saturday. Shelton said crews from Duke Energy were going to re-evaluate the situation Saturday but as far as he knew everything was under control. Officials at the store referred all comment to their corporate offices, which were closed over the weekend

Emergency crews also took a generator to the home of a girl on life support when power went out Friday night.

More than 200 accidents were also reported through mid-afternoon Saturday. These accidents resulted in more injuries than those that occurred during last week’s storm.

“I think the major difference between this storm and last time is this storm was extremely slick,” said Shelton.

The Surry County Chapter of the American Red Cross opened a shelter at the main building on Westlake Drive Friday night for those with no way to heat their homes. They also planned on having the shelter open Saturday night with volunteers on stand-by through Central Communications. According to Tom Dunn, disaster services coordinator, most people chose to stay with friends or family members who still had power or hunkered down at home.

“If we get a call, we’ll have a couple people to sign them in so they can have a warm place to stay,” he said. “It’s there for people that have no other way of having heat.”

Contact Morgan Wall at mwall@mtairynews.com or 719-1929.