Over 122,000 Florida customers remained without power Monday after Hurricane Isaias ripped through over the weekend, claiming the lives of four people.
Two fatalities related to the storm took place in Florida and another two in Alabama.
Power outage maps showed 122,110 Florida customers still without power Monday afternoon, with the largest chunk of outages located in Escambia County followed by Santa Rosa County.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a press conference Monday that “a lot of progress” has been made on power restoration.
“More than 70% of the accounts have been restored for power. We probably reached about 500,000 that were out at one point or another,” the governor said.
Florida State Guard deployed nearly 400 soldiers to help recovery efforts. DeSantis said they are still engaged but were not needed for a lot of rescue missions.
“They’ve already cleared 1,700 miles of roadway, distributed more than 4,000 cases of water, 1,700 meals, 2,600 bags of ice, and 2,200 tarps,” said the governor.
Over 20 flight hours have been spent on search and rescue and damage assessment.
“Fortunately, most of that is damage assessments because there weren’t people that needed to be rescued like we’ve had to the extent in previous storms,” DeSantis said.
Insurance loss estimates from Isaias were put in the range of $4 billion to $6 billion, according to BMS Group. The actual cost will not be known until full damage assessments are completed.
The Florida Department of Financial Services hosted an insurance assistance hub Monday to help impacted Floridians navigate the insurance claims process.
FloridaCommerce announced it has made $10 million available in short-term, zero-interest loans for businesses impacted by Hurricane Isaias.
Walmart committed $1 million in funding and supplies to support hurricane recovery efforts across the Florida Panhandle.
The Florida Department of Transportation had over 1,100 teams for storm response and deployed 1,400 generators and 100 pumps.
Meanwhile, the State Emergency Response Team is running nine different points of distribution with free supplies for people who have been impacted by the storm. Supplies include bottled water, shelf-stable food and other essential supplies. The distribution points are located across Escambia, Santa Rosa, Walton and Washington counties, according to the governor.
“Gov. Ron DeSantis is the masterclass on hurricane response,” Attorney General James Uthmeier said. “He reinvented the approach to tackling these storms in an impressive, expedient fashion. Florida now sets the world standard for disaster preparedness and response.”
