Hurricane Irma death toll reaches 82, 1.5 million without power

Power has reportedly been restored to more than two million Florida customers after Hurricane Irma tore a path of destruction through the south east of the United States.

FPL, the state’s biggest electric company, said about 1.3 million customers had no power, down from more than 3.6 million on Monday.

Additionally, Georgia Power is part of a national mutual assistance network consisting of dozens of utilities from around the country, and the company is able to tap into reinforcements when needed to restore power to Georgia customers following a storm. As of Monday morning, roughly 4.4 million of the company’s almost 5 million customers were without power, according to a company outage map. “We will not stop until 100 percent of Florida homes and businesses have power so all families can get back to their normal lives”.

In Puerto Rico, the government announced 1 million people lost power from Irma. That’s down from a combined 2 million outages at the height of the storm. Never pull tree limbs off power lines yourself or enter areas with debris, downed trees or standing water as downed power lines may be buried in wreckage.

“Unfortunately, there has been false information spread that FPL will reimburse customers for food losses as a result of Hurricane Irma”.

Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, warned the many residents still stuck in the dark that “it’s going to take us a long time to get the power back up”.

In Georgia, utilities reported around 1.2 million customers without power Tuesday morning, down from a peak of more than 1.4 million on Monday night.

In making the comparison, it’s important to remember that Wilma impacted a smaller portion of FPL’s service area – 21 counties – while Irma affected all 35 counties served by the utility, FPL spokesman Bill Orlove said.

About 46,000 of Georgia Power’s customers still didn’t have power Friday, according to the utility’s state-wide outage map. “The grid doesn’t know business from residential, neighborhood from neighborhood”, said Rob Gould, Vice President, Chief Communications Officer of Florida Power and Light.

Journeyman lineman AJ Parker, 28, said he left his 6-day-old daughter, Elsabeth Claire, and her mother in Tennessee last month to help fix high-power transmission lines in Texas towns devastated by Hurricane Harvey.

“It makes you count your blessings”, she said.

Standing in front of a produce cooler at a reopened Publix grocery store in Naples, Missy Sieber said the worst thing about not having electricity is not having air conditioning.

Officials said up to a quarter of the homes in the Keys were destroyed.