A Week After Irma hit Florida Leaving 6.7 Million Customers in Darkness, Significant Progress is Made in Restoring Power

by | Sep 18, 2017


A week after Hurricane Irma tore through Florida leaving 6.7 million electric customers without power, fewer than half a million homes and businesses remain without power.

As of 9 a.m. Monday, there were just over 407,000 accounts whose electricity has not been restored.

The task of restoring power to more than 6 million Florida customers within a week couldn’t have been accomplished were it not for the more than 30,000 power crews that came to the assistance of Florida from across the country and Canada. It marked the largest restoration of power in a single state in the history of the U.S.

“Over the past few days, I have seen firsthand how Hurricane Irma has impacted our communities, and I know from talking with these families that power restoration is the number one thing they need to start the recovery process,” Gov. Rick Scott said in a written statement. “Fully restoring power is my top priority and we have been aggressively working with utility providers to solve this issue as fast as possible. We will not stop until 100 percent of Florida homes and businesses have power so all families can get back to their normal lives.”

The two counties that took a direct hit from Irma still have tens of thousands of customers without power. Collier County leads the state with more than 70,000 outages, followed by Lee County with 67,000 accounts still without power.

Miami-Dade still has nearly 53,000 outages. Highlands County has 24,000 customers without power. Orange County has 21,000 and Monroe 18,000.

Scott has made the restoration of power a top priority in the aftermath of the storm. He has continuously held conference calls with utility companies and has even gone so far as to direct the Florida Highway Patrol to provide escorts to utility crews so they could reach the impacted areas that are without power.

For updates on power restoration, click here.

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