Hurricane Ian was so powerful that its winds were only a few miles per hour to make it a Category 5 storm. came ashore in Florida on Wednesday. And it didn’t take long to take out his wrath on Florida’s power grid.
By noon on Wednesday, she began to move along the coast of Sanibel and Captiva islands. According to tracking on poweroutage.us. In just two hours, the total number of outages exceeded 1 million. The number rose again after sunset, bringing the total number of people without power to over 2 million as of 10:00 p.m. And shortly after 5 a.m., the number of homes and businesses in the dark exceeded 2.5 million.
Southwest Florida took the brunt of the blow. Nearly all customers in several counties, including DeSoto, Charlotte and Lee, were without power as of early Thursday. At least half of all customers in several neighboring counties, including Manatee, Sarasota, Collier, Highland and Glades, were without power, according to poweroutage.us.
Reports of outages continued to spread north along the Gulf Coast, with severe outages reaching as far north as Citrus County. Smaller glitches continued to creep toward the poker.
Areas along Florida’s east coast also experienced outages. Miami-Dade, although badly affected by power outages, steadily recovered throughout the day. Outages were also seen farther inland and were found in every county on the state’s east coast.
Florida authorities have been warning for several days about possible power problems. John was relentless in his ways, cutting off the electricity in all of Cuba when it swept across the island on Tuesday, although power was restored in some areas.
The National Weather Service warned before landfall that Hurricane Ian would cause “catastrophic” wind damage to southwest Florida. Service Director Ken Graham said during a press briefing Wednesday that the storm will take 24 hours to complete its journey across the state after the eye makes landfall.
“This is going to be a storm we’re talking about for years to come,” he said.
Florida Power & Light, the main provider of outage reporting to homes and businesses, tweeted Wednesday that the company expects “widespread, widespread” outages. Of the more than 5.7 million customers tracked through PowerOutage.us, more than 1 million are reported to have lost power.
Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Department of Emergency Management, said Wednesday that more than 30,000 linemen are “assembled and ready” to help restore power if it’s safe to do so. Gov. Ron DeSantis said later in the day that the number had increased 42,000.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurricane-ian-florida-power-outages/
