Staff Reports
The Florida Municipal Electric Association says hundreds of power pros are on the ground working to restore power to Floridians who lost electricity during the storm.
FMEA Executive Director Amy Zubaly said Hurricane Idalia impacted more than a third of Florida’s 33 public power utilities and that there were, as of noon Wednesday, about 42,000 public power customers without power. As of 11 a.m., public power utilities had restored power to approximately 52,000 customers.
“Prior to Hurricane Idalia’s landfall, the Florida Municipal Electric Association had assembled more than 350 mutual aid resources from nearly 50 public power utilities across 13 states from as far away as Nebraska and Oklahoma to as near as Alabama and Georgia and from within Florida, along with hundreds of contractors and tree crews,” Zubaly said.
“Florida’s public power utilities are committed to fully restoring power to their customers as quickly and safely as possible and will continue to work around the clock until every customer has electric service. We greatly appreciate our network of mutual aid support that will help make this possible and the partnership of the Governor’s Office, Florida Division of Emergency Management, and local emergency operations centers as we work toward recovery.”
FMEA was originally established as the Florida Municipal Utilities Association in 1942 in response to World War II fuel shortages. It now represents the unified interests of 33 public power communities across the state.
Members include utilities that range in size from cities as populous as Jacksonville, Orlando, Lakeland, Tallahassee and Gainesville, to smaller Main Street towns, such as Havana, Wauchula and Bushnell. Combined, FMEA’s member utilities serve more than three million residential and business consumers.
