Hurricane Ian: When will FPL restore all power in Florida?
Just because you can’t see Florida Power & Light crews in your neighborhood, that doesn’t mean they’re not working hard to restore your power.
Many of those crews are working behind the scenes and out of sight to restore electricity throughout Florida after Hurricane Ian, said Florida Power & Light’s Ed Devarona in a news briefing Sunday morning.
“Understand that power may be out to your neighborhood and you may not see a crew working right at your house,” said Devarona, FPL’s vice president of transmission and substation. “The equipment that actually serves your neighborhood, that’s actually preventing power from being restored efficiently, may be in a place where the crews are not visible to you.
"But rest assured, our team is working around the clock.”
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With all those people working — 21,000 from 30 U.S. states — Florida should have all its power “essentially restored” within one week, Devarona said.
Although some areas might take longer.
“Across the system, we’re estimating that we’ll have essentially restored (power) — which is about 95 percent of the customers — at the end of the day on Sunday, Oct. 9,” he said. “We do see, however, that there are areas that are very heavily impacted and some areas that actually won’t be able to take service.
“So FPL will be restoring service to those areas up to where we can, and obviously when those facilities are able to take power, then we’ll actually go ahead and complete that.”
Devarona gave the news briefing from FPL’s Iona substation on Fort Myers Beach. The briefing was also streamed on Facebook Live.
“I just want to start by saying that we understand how difficult it is to be without power,” Devarona said at the beginning of the 9 a.m. briefing. “And our company, Florida Power and Light, is dedicated to working around the clock until every single customer’s restored.”
As of 6 a.m. Sunday, he said, FPL has restored power to 1.6 million Florida customers — about 75 percent of the customers affected by Ian.
He didn’t provide many specifics on Lee and Collier counties, but did say FPL has been working closely with other utilities to restore power, including Lee County Electric Cooperative.
“We’ll be coordinating with them in the coming days," he said. “We’re all in this together. We want to make sure that we restore power for all of Florida.”
FPL and other utility crews are facing a lot of challenges in restoring power, he said. Those include debris, structural issues and "significant flooding” that prevents crews from getting where they need to be.
Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells is an arts and entertainment reporter for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. Email him at crunnells@gannett.com or connect on Facebook (facebook.com/charles.runnells.7), Twitter (@charlesrunnells) and Instagram (@crunnells1).
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Hurricane Ian: FPL gives update on power restoration in Florida
