About 30,000 LCEC customers remain without power 12 days after Hurricane Ian

Image via LCEC Twitter.

Almost 30,000 remain without power statewide 12 days after Hurricane Ian made landfall. All subscribe to Lee County Electric Cooperative (LCEC), and the vast majority live in Lee County, where washed-out bridges still leave utility vehicles unable to reach some areas.

A total of 27,500 Lee County customers still have service out, according to a Public Service Commission report published at 6 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 10. Another 2,140 in Collier County, to the immediate south of Lee, also remain in the dark. Another 22 LCEC customers in Charlotte County, to Lee County’s north, have not had power restored. Finally, two of the 56 LCEC customers in Broward County have no electricity.

In many senses, it’s a success story that less than two weeks after Florida’s deadliest storm in a century made landfall on Sept. 28, most power has been restored. At the peak of reported outages, at noon on Sept. 29, almost 2.7 million had no electricity.

It’s no surprise the last lingering blackout zone remains in Southwest Florida. The hurricane landed as a Category 4 storm in Cayo Costa, delivering 150 mph winds at the time. That largely destroyed much of LCEC’s infrastructure.

The storm impacted numerous other power grids, including Florida Power & Light (FPL), Duke Energy, the Tampa Electric Cooperative and numerous small cooperatives and municipal power providers.

FPL, the state’s largest electrical utility provider, reported 100% restoration on Sunday, Oct. 9, while Duke and TECO reached that point last Tuesday, Oct. 4. Smaller providers have moved at various rates depending on impacts of the storm — nearly all of Hardee County had no power for days as Peace River Electric Cooperative (PREC) reported a 99.7% outage in the county days after the storm.

But since 3 p.m. on Sunday, when PREC reported its last 26 customers had electricity, and the Glades Electric Cooperative brought its last 17 users back online, LCEC remains the only power provider still impacted.

Of note, FPL stressed some customers may have had power receiver equipment at their homes destroyed which may require individual repairs. Financial support is available to assist homeowners who still do not have electricity because of needed repairs to their own properties.

Those still without power include 7,398 on Pine Island and 10,946 on Sanibel. Both islands had the only bridges providing land access destroyed by the storm. While a temporary gravel bridge has reconnected Pine Island to the mainland, LCEC still is not providing estimates on when it can be restored. Trucks still cannot access Sanibel, where a causeway to the barrier island is severed in three places.