(Reuters) – More than 280,000 homes and businesses were without power in Florida on Wednesday as hurricane Idalia slammed the state, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
Hurricane Idalia slammed into the Big Bend region of Florida, where millions of residents had evacuated or hunkered down in anticipation of a dangerous surge of tidal water, but the storm’s power ebbed as it headed toward Georgia.
Evacuations were ordered in 28 of Florida’s 67 counties as of late Tuesday. Most of the state and parts of Georgia and South Carolina are under storm warnings or advisories.
The utility experiencing the most outages was Duke Energy with over 40,000 customers without power, followed by Florida Power & Light Company at more than 38,000.
More than 90,000 in Georgia also were without power.
Tampa Electric on Wednesday said power has been restored to most of its some 35,000 customers who were impacted.
Ahead of the storm, Tampa Electric secured about 3,000 workers from other utilities, including line crews, tree trimmers and damage assessors.
“The weather impact was not as severe as anticipated, and our crews were able to work through the night to restore customers during the storm,” said Archie Collins, CEO of Tampa Electric
Here are the major outages by utility in Florida:
Power Companies Outages
Duke Energy 41,747
Florida Power & Light Company 38,519
Clay Electric Coop 35,748
City of Tallahassee 31,126
Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative 28,281
Central Florida Electric Cooperative 25,059
Talquin Electric Cooperative 22,225
Jacksonville Electric Authority 19,476
Tri-County Electric Coop 19,234
Withlacoochee River Electric Coop 9,675
Total Out 281,317
(Reporting by Brijesh Patel and Anushree Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Porter and Bill Berkrot)
