FPL hoping to have power up by the weekend:
Power's still down for at least 284,400
Patience wears thin as FPL says it hopes to have all back on the grid by next weekend.
By Kristi E. Swartz
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Fed-up customers tired of sitting in their dark, sweltering homes put Florida Power & Light Co. on the defensive Wednesday, tossing aside the company's "we're working as fast as we can" message and wanting to know only one thing:
When is my power coming back on?
"The major problem we've had is FP&L," Delray Beach Mayor Jeff Perlman said. "We've spent three days looking for a truck and couldn't find one. ... They really need to be here."
Jack Smith, 77, a resident of the Broadmoor neighborhood in West Palm Beach, regained power at 11 a.m. Tuesday. But two hours later it was off again.
"I don't think we can stay here much longer," said Smith, who has had open-heart surgery and uses a pacemaker. "It's awful hot."
Power outages from the ravages of Hurricane Frances, which pummeled Palm Beach County late Saturday and early Sunday, continued in large numbers Wednesday. More than half of the county's customers had gotten their power back as of 5 p.m. Wednesday — but that still left 284,400 without it.
In Martin County, 23,500 of the 84,000 customers without power have their lights back on. In St. Lucie County, 28,100 of the 95,000 customers who lost power now have electricity.
Progress in Indian River and Okeechobee counties has been slower. Of the 44,000 outages in Indian River, only 6,300 have been restored. In Okeechobee County, a scant 3,300 of the 18,000 customers who lost electricity now have it.
"That's one of the harder-hit areas, and there's a lot of debris, and the debris has to be moved first — trees off of lines, mostly," FPL spokeswoman Pat Davis said of Okeechobee County.
FPL mounted a public-relations offensive Tuesday, bringing in Armando Olivera, president of the utility, and Lew Hay, chairman and chief executive of the utility's parent, FPL Group Inc., to the Palm Beach County Emergency Operations Center.
They said they won't know until after 5 p.m. today when customers in 26 counties, including Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River and Okeechobee, will have their lights back on.
Hay, who has power at his home, said the storm pounded Florida enough to knock power out to nearly everyone in FPL's 27,000-square-mile territory. Olivera, who had to evacuate his home and did not have electricity as of Tuesday, said the damage to FPL's customers was more extensive than that of Hurricane Andrew.
Starting at 5:01 p.m. today, residents will be able to call FPL at (800) 4-OUTAGE (468-8243), give their address and receive a date on which they should have electricity. Officials hope to have everyone back on the grid by next weekend.
"We know it's tough, we really do," Davis said. "We live and work here, too."
FPL said it has 12,000 workers, including some from utilities in North Carolina, Illinois, Texas and Canada, spread out over its territory trying to restore electricity. It hopes to finish the job in Miami-Dade County by tonight and in Broward, Manatee and Sarasota counties by Friday.
Other areas to be completed Wednesday night were the Hurricane Charley-ravaged counties of Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto, Hendry, Lee and Union, which went through severe power outages when that Category 4 storm hit Southwest Florida three weeks ago.
As restoration is complete in those areas, FPL will move its crews, as well as the ones from out of state, into Palm Beach County and other areas.
"Our biggest issue here is to get lights on," South Bay Mayor Clarence Anthony said, adding that he couldn't be critical of FPL. "I don't think anyone could have prepared us for what we are experiencing."
But customers, some of whom have been without air conditioning, refrigerator, stove or running water since Friday, say they haven't seen FPL trucks or they've found out-of-state crews drinking coffee and waiting for their work assignments. One man stood by the side of the road in Boca Raton with a sign that said, "Where the hell is FPL?"
Others have accused the utility of restoring power first to those who live in Palm Beach, Boca Raton and other affluent areas.
"I can say emphatically that there is no preferential treatment based on economics or any criteria," FPL spokeswoman Davis said.
When the power goes out, FPL works to restore essential customers first — hospitals, public safety agencies and communication and transportation services — then moves to the projects that restore the largest number of customers the fastest. Sometimes that means one side of the street with a minor repair job may have its electricity turned on first, but the other side, where poles have to be replaced, may take longer.
If an entire street has electricity with the exception of one home, residents should notify FPL, Davis said. The same goes if an apartment or condominium has power but portions do not, she said.
Meanwhile, those without power face more days in the late-summer heat waiting for relief, like Broadmoor resident Smith's wife, Dorothy, 76, a native of Miami who remembers a less artificially chilled South Florida.
"If you just get a cold shower before you get too hot and before you go to bed, and sleep with the windows open — it's just like it used to be before there was air conditioning," she said.
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