Nearly a week after Hurricane Ian smashed into Florida and left carved a path of destruction that reached into the Carolinas, more than half a million statewide residents are facing another day without electricity.
Alice Pujols goes through someone else's discarded items for clothes and shoes for her family Monday, Oct. 3, 2022, in Fort Myers, Fla. Pujols's home was completely destroyed after her home flooded due to rising waters caused by Hurricane Ian.
Ian knocked out power to 2.6 million customers across Florida when it roared ashore with 150 mph winds and pushing a powerful storm surge. A utility spokesperson said the remaining 5% comprises mostly cases where there’s a special situation making it difficult to restore power, such as the home being so damaged it can’t receive power or the area still being flooded. Those outages do not include customers whose homes or businesses were destroyed.
Silagy said the utility has invested $4 billion over the last 10 years to harden its infrastructure by doing things such as burying more power lines, noting 40% of their distribution system is now underground. The utility is also using more technology like drones that can stay aloft for hours to get a better picture of damage to the system, and sensors at substations that can alert them to flooding so they can shut off parts of the system before the water hits.
Ian washed away bridges and roads to several barrier islands. About 130 Florida Department of Transportation trucks were dispatched to build a temporary bridge to Pine Island and by the end of the week should be finished on a structure drivers can carefully traverse at slow speeds, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a news conference Monday.Elsewhere, the hurricane’s remnants, now a nor’easter, weren’t done with the U.S. The mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts got flooding rains.
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