Scott Powers
More than 5.6 million homes and businesses still were without power at 6 a.m. Tuesday in the wake of Hurricane Irma, according to the latest report from the Florida Office of Emergency Management.
That includes Collier County and several low-population counties where the numbers of customers — individual homes or businesses — topped 90 percent Tuesday morning, according to the latest state reports. In 13 of Florida’s 67 counties, at least three-quarters of the county is dark. In 41 of the counties, more than half the customers are without power.
In Collier County, home of Naples, 92 percent of the customers were without power at 6 a.m., a total of 227,000 dark homes and businesses.
Worst hit, percentage wise, are Highlands County, where 99 percent of the customers are without power; Hendry and Collier counties, at 92 percent; Union County, where 86 percent were without electricity; Glades County with 85 percent; Columbia County with 84 percent; and Monroe, at 83 percent dark.
In Pinellas County, 340,000 customers were without power Tuesday morning, 78 percent.
The greatest outages in raw numbers continue in Miami-Dade and Broward counties where reports indicate 669,000 customers were without power and in neighboring South Florida Broward County, with 446,000, and Palm Beach County, 417,000.
However, in the Tampa Bay, Southwest Florid, and Central Florida areas, huge numbers of customers also were without power Tuesday morning: 431,000 in Pinellas County, 340,000 in Lee County, 307,000 in Orange County, 264,000 in Hillsborough, 227,000 in Collier, and 207,000 in Volusia County.
