FPL working to restore power to over 300000 SWFL residents

Hurricane Irma is already being blamed for almost $2 billion in insured losses in Florida and the amount is expected to keep rising.

State officials would not provide any details on how many elders and disabled can not get back into their homes because of the storms and would not provide the Herald/Times a list of the homes that remain evacuated or closed. In 1935, the Labor Day Hurricane demolished a good number of buildings and claimed the lives of more than 400 people.

The deeper south you drive into the Florida Keys, the worse Irma’s destruction gets. So far regulators say that more than 243,000 homeowners have filed claims associated with the deadly storm.

The Federal Emergency Managment Agency has reported that 25-percent of all homes in the Florida Keys were destroyed and 65-percent sustained major damage when they took a direct hit from Hurricane Irma.

President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, were to visit Florida to survey the damage on Thursday.

Authorities have kept parts of the Keys closed until now because they were anxious about what would happen when residents returned en masse to find they were without power or running water.

The city has sent 17 workers to communities who had extensive power outages because of the wrath of Irma.

“We have the largest assembly of human beings in one area for power, and rapidly it’s being turned on”, President Trump said.

“You just described it”, said Monroe County Commissioner David Rice. The storm killed at least 33 in Florida.

Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam says meals will be available to students through the National School Lunch Program.

State records showed problems with fire and safety standards, as well as more serious issues with generator maintenance and testing, according to February 2016 reports by Florida Agency for Health Care Administration inspectors.

“Technology is making it possible for our members, working in their own center, to provide direct support to FPL as they work tirelessly to restore power to millions of customers”. Highlands County has 24,000 customers without power.

In the Florida Keys and southwest Florida, students are expected to miss another week of school.

Heat is a top killer after hurricanes and disasters cause power outages, said Thomas Kirsch, director of the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health.

On Thursday, 57 residents were moved from a suburban Fort Lauderdale assisted-living facility without power to two nearby centers where electricity was just restored.

Irma’s furious march through Florida not only darkened millions of homes, it also flooded roads, piling them with debris and blocking off access to neighborhoods.

In the United States, almost 7 million people were told to evacuate over the weekend and 13 million Floridians have been left without power in hot steamy weather. He added that the center immediately contacted Florida Power & Light and continued to follow up with them for status updates on when repairs would be made.