FPL president visits utility crews in Fort Myers; vows all power back on by Friday

For more coverage of Hurricane Irma and the storm's aftermath visit: news-press.com/hurricane.

Hurricane Irma caused the most massive outage in the history of Florida Power & Light, but the utility's president and CEO said Tuesday that just 2 percent of customers were still without power and all service would be restored by Friday.

Other utility providers had similar results to report.

FPL's top boss, Eric Silagy, came to Fort Myers to see how reconnection efforts were going. He ended up in the backyard of a home on Mandel Road where work crews were stringing new lines, new insulators, and new transformers. 

"Geographically this is the biggest challenge we've ever faced," Silagy said, adding it affected all 35 counties that are in FPL territory.

Of the 10 million people they provide service to, SIlaguy said only 600,000 never lost power. 

"We mobilized 10 days before (Irma)," he said, with an army of utility workers from 30 states and Canada in place helping to reconnect service. That army needed fuel, food, and places to sleep, necessitating semi-tractor-trailers that sleep 42 people being brought in.

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"My focus is getting the lights back on," he said. "I've got 27,000 people working round the clock. I know your power is out and I won't stop until every customer is back up."

Silagy said the restoration was akin to hand-to-hand combat. "We're going house-to-house now," he said. "If you're out of power, like this family here, it's tough."

He said that the original Sept. 22 date promised by FPL for everyone to have power would be met.

Those words were music to the ears of Christine Santana, a resident one house down from where utility crews were working on Mandel.

"I don't know how to explain how happy I would be. I have a newborn. He was born a week before the hurricane," she said. "It's been a living hell."

After spending some time with her newborn and four other kids at the shelter in Cape Coral High School, Santana's family finally got home and got a generator.

"We used our last bit of cash, $600," she said. "And it takes $40 of gas a day."

For people like Santana, the 2 percent of customers still without electricity, Silagy urged them not to despair.

"Don't lose hope, we're going to get to you and it will be very soon," he said.

He said crews can't run at breakneck speed because of safety concerns and must sleep and eat so as not to make a mistake.

"Make a mistake and you're dead," he stressed.

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Danny Pate, vice president of operations for CenturyLink, said the phone and internet provider had restored about 90 percent of service with the remainder about to wrap up.

"We are still managing power-related issues," Pate said, with the acquisition of generators a priority. "By Friday we should have the majority of the market up."

Pate said CenturyLink's south Florida market stretched from Fort Myers to Avon Lake to south of Lake Okeechobee and down to Marco Island.

"There's been some amazing partnerships," he said, citing fire departments, sheriff's offices, and other governmental responders. "Everyone is helping everyone."

He also lauded the work of CenturyLink employees: "(They) gave up their entire lives this week."

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About 81 percent of Comcast customers in Southwest Florida impacted by Hurricane Irma have been reconnected, said Mindy Kramer, vice president of public relations for the cable provider's Florida Region.

"For example, in the past 24 hours alone we’ve restored another 35,000 customers," she said. "We also continue to restore pocket outages in these areas. This means that customers may have power restored but Xfinity services may still not be working."

She said reasons for remaining outages include lack of commercial power, downed cables, physical damage such as fiber line cuts, and power surges that have damaged personal computers, modems and routers.

A spokeswoman for Verizon said that 100 percent of network facilities in the Florida Keys was restored over the weekend.

"The Verizon network is operating business as usual from a performance perspective across the state of Florida," said Kate Jay, media contact for Verizon.

What Comcast is doing for customers

Working with customers on a case-by-case basis and will work with them to suspend their services or request a credit.  Comcast will replace any impaired or lost XFINITY equipment at no additional charge.

No charge for anin-home appointment with a technician during recovery efforts. 

During recoveryefforts Comcast has suspended late payment fees and suspended collections activity.

Waived trouble call charges, early termination fees, unreturned equipment fees, reactivation fees.

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