Nearly 90% of Florida customers have already recovered power supply to nearly a week after Hurricane Irma, which hit the state last Sunday and left about 6.7 million homes in the dark.
According to Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, an office that has data from companies that supply electricity, up to noon Saturday, a total of 1,074,469 accounts are still without electricity, a figure that is equivalent to 10.2% of the total.
Among the counties most affected by the lack of energy is Monroe, home to the Florida Keys, where Irma’s eye landed on Sunday morning at Category 4, then down the west coast of mainland Florida.
In this county, 55% of customers, a total of 35,010 accounts, still do not have electricity, although it is central Highlands County that leads the table of more blackouts, with 67% of accounts (41,897) even in the dark .
In Miami-Dade, the most populous state, there are now 190,550 users without electricity (17% of the total), among which are some schools and educational centers and has led the school authorities not to pronounce until now the date scheduled for the resumption of school classes.
One of the state’s top supplying companies, Florida Power & Light (FPL), reported Friday that it has already restored electricity to more than 97% of key facilities and facilities such as hospitals, emergency operations centers, ports and airports, barracks and correctional facilities.
FPL hopes to complete the energy-recovery process in eastern counties no later than Sunday night, while in the case of the west coast the scheduled date is Friday.
In Broward County, a Miami-Dade neighbor, 99,014 homes and offices remain without electricity, out of a total of more than 933,300 accounts, according to the Florida Emergency Management Division.
This office highlights that the operations of electricity replenishment undertaken by more than 30,000 workers since Irma’s passage represent “the greatest task of restoring energy in a state of history.”
The provisional figure for deaths related to the devastating passage of Hurricane Irma in the southeastern US (Florida, Georgia and South Carolina) is already at least 39, according to information, even without knowing the final balance of material damages and losses, which will take months to be determined.
In the Florida Keys, where the eye of Hurricane Irma struck last Sunday as a Category 4 cyclone, at least eight people were killed and more than 40 injured, according to official figures.
