As rising temperatures Thursday started melting away this week’s winter mess, officials started assessing the damage from a storm that pummeled much of Georgia earlier in the week, especially the Atlanta area. Georgia Department of Transportation’s District 1, based in Gainesville and covering Northeast Georgia, spent Thursday morning unloading unused materials from vehicles and figuring up timecards, said Teri Pope, district spokeswoman. “We’ve had 250 people working for 48 straight hours — that is a minimum of 12,000 man-hours worked since Tuesday,” she said.