Jacob Ogles
Days after Hurricane Helene made landfall, nearly 92,000 Floridians remain without power.
A 6 a.m. update from the Florida Public Service Commission reports more than 99% of customers in the state have power, but some hard-hit counties still have more than half of households with the lights out.
In Hamilton County, 74.42% of customers await power restoration, representing nearly 5,300 people still in the dark. In Madison County, 63.18% of customers, nearly 7,300 people, are still out of power. In Taylor County, about 56.55%, more than 7,900 customers, remain without service.
In Dixie County, 44.61% are still out, or more than 4,700 customers. Gilchrist has 33.1% out, about 3,400 total. The more populous Columbia County has 32.05% awaiting electricity, nearly 12,000 people. Jefferson and Lafayette counties have 28.3% and 23.77% of customers in the dark, respectively, with more than 3,500 accounts affected collectively. In Suwannee County, nearly 8,000 are still affected by outages, or 31.82% of customers there.
While those areas felt the direct brunt of Helene’s hurricane force winds, other more populated areas also remain impacted due to the storm’s wide reach across Florida’s west coast.
Nearly 20,000 customers in Pinellas still await service. While that’s just 3.47% of accounts in the peninsular county, that represents the most customers in the dark still of any Florida county almost four days after the impacts of Helene. Alachua County in North Florida still has more than 11,000 without service, about 8.04% of all accounts in the county.
More than 58,000 of those still without power are on one of Florida’s electric co-ops, including more than 18,000 Clay Electric Cooperative customers. The provider said power should be restored to most customers there within 48 hours.
More than 28,000 Duke Energy customers await service, including all those in Pinellas County. More than 2,000 Florida Power & Light Company customers are also still impacted, as are more than 3,200 on municipal service.
