After the storm: Hurricane Milton power outage update

When Hurricane Milton made landfall on the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 9, millions of people lost access to power and water. At one point, 3.2 million had lost power in the state, and 1.7 million of them were on the Gulf Coast. 

In the following days, Tampa Electric, Duke Energy and Florida Power & Light sent crews out in unprecedented numbers to work around the clock. The work has finally paid off, but isn’t quite finished. Almost all power has been restored to customers all over the coast. 

According to released statements, Tampa Electric mobilized 6,000 utility workers from as far away as Texas and Minnesota to assist with power restoration. 97% of its customer base lost power, and after installing 605 transformers, over 1,500 cross arms and about 1,000 poles and over a hundred of miles of wire across its service area so far, 95% of the customer base has restored power.

Duke Energy, which has 2 million residential, commercial and industrial customers, originally reported 1 million outages. After working around the clock for the last week, the outages are down to about 3,000. 

“The last customer to receive power after a devastating storm like Hurricane Milton is just as important to us as the first. Rest assured, we will maintain the same level of focus and dedication we have had throughout this event until we get the lights back on for all customers,” says Melissa Seixas, Duke Energy Florida state president in a statement.

Florida Power & Light reports that 99% of its customer base has power restored. Across Collier, Charlotte and Lee counties, 676 are without power as of Friday morning out of approximately 676,000 customers. 

FPL president and CEO Armando Pimentel says in a release, ““I’m proud that our crews have restored power to more than two million customers in just 5 days. And while that means 99% of affected customers have been restored, we also know that there are still customers without power in some the hardest hit areas. For those customers, please know that we will not stop until we get the lights back on for everyone.”

Those without power are in areas most affected by the storm, but all three companies have vowed to continue working until every light is back on.