Hurricane Irma Damage & Power Outages
If you're wondering when you'll get your power back, you are not alone. More than half of Florida was without power after Hurricane Irma slashed through the Sunshine State.
Statewide Wednesday afternoon, about 3.5 million accounts were without power. Only nine of Florida's 67 counties don't have outages reported, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
Gould said it would take until the end of Sept. 22 to restore power along the state's western coast, where the damage was much more severe. He did say that some areas hit by tornadoes or flooding may take longer.
Utility officials said they have nearly 20,000 workers helping with the restoration effort. FPL has crews from as far away as Canada and California."We are racing to get the lights back on, we've been making some really good progress," Gould said, adding that crews are restoring power at a rate about 25 percent faster than they did after Hurricane Wilma in 2005.
News 6 spent Wednesday in hard-hit Sanford with FPL contractors from New York. Linemen had to rebuild the much of the electrical infrastructure along Summerlin Avenue. They removed trees and replaced several power poles before they could begin to reconnect power lines.
"The grid is not symmetrical," Gould aid. "The grid does know business from residential. It does not know one neighborhood from another. the grid is the grid. it's set in certain ways. It can criss-cross and be in different directions. It can be very possible you can look across the street and you neighbor has power and you don't."
Gould also explained who gets priority.
"We look to make sure our generation facilities are running and they are," said Gould. "Then we shift to the critical infrastructure facilities water treatment, fire stations, police hospital. all critical facilities. If you happen to be on a grid that is served by a hospital chances are your power will come up sooner. Then we go to the feeder lines to make sure those are the main power lines that are feeding the neighborhood lines. We get those up and running. and then we to the individual neighborhoods."
A Duke Energy spokesman told News 6 that it could be up to 10 days before their customers have power again. The company said it must replace nearly 3,000 power poles and 950 miles of wire across Florida.
As of Wednesday afternoon, power has been restored for 641,700 customers and 752,400 remain without power, a Duke spokesperson said.
Orlando Utility Company, or OUC, officials said the company expects to have its entire territory resorted by 10 p.m. Friday. More than 70,000 customers are still without power as of Tuesday evening.
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