Hurricane Ian: 1.2 million Floridians have power back on, but some may wait weeks, FPL says

Power has been restored to roughly 1.2 million of the 2 million Florida Power & Light customers whose homes and businesses went dark as Hurricane Ian barreled through the state this week, utility officials said Friday.

However, the head of the state’s largest utility warned that some of its remaining 850,000 customers are going to have to wait — some for weeks, if not months — for their lights to be turned back on.

“There’s a lot of challenges in front of us,” FPL president and CEO Eric Silagy said during an evening news conference at the company’s command center in Riviera Beach. “I don’t want to sugarcoat this.”

While he laid out a plan to restore service to customers in most counties it serves by Tuesday, Silagy didn’t offer a timeline for when power might return to hard-hit areas of Southwest Florida.

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A catch-all category, labeled “assessing damage,” was on a chart that listed when service would be fully restored in eight Southwest Florida counties, including Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Sarasota and Glades. In other words, there is no specific timetable for those areas.

With buildings flattened, bridges destroyed and trees and other debris making roads impassable, the obstacles are enormous along the state’s Gulf Coast, Silagy said. In some areas, the utility will have to use boats or barges to bring equipment to areas that are cut off from the mainland. Some homes and businesses will have to be rebuilt before power can be restored.

A more widespread problem is floodwater, he said.

Unprecedented storm surge along with torrential rains unleashed by one of the most ferocious storms ever to hit the state are preventing crews from reaching many neighborhoods — not just those in Southwest Florida, Silagy said.

Areas near Daytona Beach, along the state’s east coast, remain underwater. Some FPL customers in Volusia, Seminole and Flagler counties may remain without power until late Tuesday, he said.

“We’re going to have to wait until the water recedes,” Silagy said. “Water and electricity don’t mix really good.”

He emphasized that about 21,000 workers, including some from other states, are working around the clock to reconnect as many people as possible as quickly as possible. The timeline is a guide.

Some people may have their power restored far sooner than company officials are predicting, he said.

The utility was able to fully restore power in 12 counties, including Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade, quickly because its own power grid wasn't destroyed, Silagy said. Unlike in previous storms, like Irma in 2017, none of its power generation or transmission plants sustained any damage.

By late Saturday, FPL expects power to be fully restored in an additional six counties, including Alachua, St. Lucie and Martin. By Sunday night, customers in Brevard and Okeechobee counties should be able to power up their air conditioners.

Other utilities are also working to restore power to tens of thousands of households throughout the state. When Ian finished its deadly and devastating trek across the state on Thursday, at least 2.5 million households were without power, state officials said.

Duke Energy, which serves the central part of the state, said late Friday that it was working to restore electricity to 379,000 of its 1.9 million customers in Florida. Some 43,000 remained dark in the St. Petersburg-Clearwater area along with about 131,000 near Daytona Beach.

The Lee County Electric Cooperative, which serves 240,000 homes and businesses, reported that about 228,000 customers — or 94% — had yet to have service restored.

Silagy, who has been president of FPL since 2011, called the devastation from Ian horrific.

“It’s heartbreaking to see the amount of damage Ian brought on Southwest Florida,” he said. “It’s just heartbreaking to see what the people have had to go through and will continue to go through for months and even years.”

Jane Musgrave covers federal and civil courts and occasionally ventures into criminal trials in state court. Contact her at jmusgrave@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Lights back on in 1.2 million Florida households, FPL says.