More than one million customers across Florida are without power after Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm, causing widespread outages and prompting utility providers, including FPL and Duke Energy, to mobilize large-scale restoration efforts.
More than one million customers across Florida are without power Friday morning, as utility providers report significant outages throughout the state following the landfall of Hurricane Helene on Thursday night.
As of 10:15 A.M., approximately 1,067,192 customers have been affected, representing nearly 10 percent of the state’s tracked electricity users, according to utility data. The most significant impacts are occurring in regions served by Duke Energy and Florida Power & Light (FPL), two of the state’s primary electricity providers. According to poweroutages.us, Duke Energy reports 367,876 outages, while FPL, the state’s largest utility, has 193,180 outages.
FPL announced on Friday that more than 460,000 customers have had their power restored since Hurricane Helene’s landfall. The company has additionally mobilized a workforce of more than 10,000 personnel from 23 states, stationed at 14 sites, to support ongoing restoration efforts.
“Though our system held up well and our team of thousands continues to work around-the-clock, some of our customers remain without power,” said FPL President and CEO Armando Pimentel. “To them, we have a simple message: We will not stop until your lights are back on.”
As of 7:30 a.m., Duke Energy said that the company’s 8,000 workers have restored power for nearly 198,000 customers.
“Our crews worked through the night to assess the immense damage caused by Hurricane Helene and get the lights back on where conditions allowed,” said Todd Fountain, Duke Energy Florida storm director. “We’ve made significant progress over the last 24 hours, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us. We thank our customers for their patience, support and ongoing commitment to safety.”
Smaller regional utilities are also experiencing disruptions. The Central Florida Electric Cooperative, which serves rural areas, 36,690 customers without power. Similarly, Gainesville Regional Utilities is reporting outages for 49,261 of its customers, and Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative is facing near-total outages with 28,848 of its 28,891 customers affected.
Urban areas are also facing widespread outages. In Tallahassee, the municipal utility reports that more than 45,000 customers are without power, while JEA, serving Jacksonville and surrounding areas, is reporting 90,211 outages. In total, Pinellas county has 227.544 residents without power, as of the latest update.
Hurricane Helene made landfall late Thursday night in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 storm, generating sustained winds of 140 mph and unleashing a catastrophic storm surge that threatened the Gulf Coast.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) confirmed Helene struck near the mouth of the Aucilla River at approximately 11:10 p.m., with hurricane-force winds extending outward up to 60 miles from its center and tropical-storm-force winds reaching 310 miles.
The most severe danger from the storm was a life-threatening storm surge, with areas between Carrabelle and the Suwannee River potentially facing inundation as high as 20 feet above ground level. The storm surge risk extended throughout the west coast of the Florida Peninsula, with the NHC describing the scenario as “catastrophic,” urging residents to take immediate shelter from the storm’s destructive winds and flooding potential.
“Helene continues to produce catastrophic winds that are pushing further inland over the Florida Big Bend and Florida Panhandle and will soon be entering southeastern Georgia,” the agency said in its midnight update. “This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation.”