Scott Powers
For the first time since early Monday morning, power is on for just over half the state of Florida.
That means 5.47 million homes and businesses still were without power at noon today, according to the latest data compiled and provided by the Florida Office of Emergency Management. That’s 48 percent of all electricity customers – houses and businesses – throughout the state.
Hardest hit areas remain Collier County and a handful of small counties that have power outages affecting almost 90 percent, or more, of the customers. In Collier the power outage slipped just below 90 percent by noon, to 89 percent, but more than 219,000 customers still were without electricity.
The outages affect 667,000 customers in Miami-Dade County, 482,000 in Brevard County, 423,000 in Pinellas County; 406,000 in Palm Beach County; 356,000 in Lee County; and 297,000 in Orange County. In Hillsborough County, 227,000 customers were without power; in Collier, 219,000; Volusia County, 206,000; Brevard County, 192,000; Polk County 172,000; Duval County, 160,000; and Seminole County, 142,000.
All of those counties except Hillsborough and Duval are seeing more than half of electricity customers still going without, with the percentage as high as 77 percent in both Pinellas and Lee.
In less-populated Highlands County, 99 percent of customers were without power at noon Tuesday, according to the state data. Only 528 out of more than 62,000 had power.
In Lafayette County, 90 percent were without. Collier, Glades, Monroe, Hendry, Pinellas, and Lee counties had more than three-quarters without power.
