DeSantis celebrates more than 95% having power restored after Idalia

PERRY, Fla. – Power outages across Florida hover around or below 20,000 as of Tuesday morning, representing a greater than 95% restoration after Hurricane Idalia rammed the Big Bend last Wednesday.

Monday evening, Gov. Ron DeSantis held a press conference in Perry where he celebrated the power restoration occurring so swiftly, with more than half-a-million losing power to the storm at its height.

The electricity groups working to restore remaining customers’ power in the Big Bend include Duke Energy, Florida Power and Light, TECO and other local co-ops.

The counties still impacted are Dixie, Taylor, Madison, Suwannee and Hamilton.

“Restoring power to the homes and businesses of impacted Floridians is an important step in the recovery process and would not be possible without the hard work of our utility linemen,” DeSantis said on Monday.

“I’m glad to announce that they have been able to restore 96% of accounts less than a week after Idalia made landfall,” he said.

95% restoration in those more severely impacted counties was announced to be expected by Wednesday.

DeSantis’ administration worked with local authorities and electricity providers to stage around 30,000 linemen, tree trimmers and other crews to prepare for Idalia’s impacts. The storm made landfall as a Category 3.

“Crews will remain in the impacted areas until all accounts that can safely receive power are brought back online,” the governor’s office said.

As of Monday morning, outages were at around 30,000. Last Friday, they neared 100,000.

The storm brought massive destruction to primely the Big Bend region, with outages and impacts stretching considerably beyond the storm’s direct path, such as Tampa Bay and parts of the Panhandle.

“We were ready for this. We had search and rescue teams staged, National Guard, we had 1.2 million gallons of gasoline in the event of fuel shortages. We had over 30,000 lineman to restore power. And so as soon as the storm passed, our first responders were on the scene checking on people,” DeSantis said last week.

Florida’s disaster response is ongoing.

DeSantis activated a small business loan program to help relief efforts, celebrated private corporations like Publix and Chick-fil-A donating to recovery, along with activating the Florida Disaster Fund to help raise and disburse more money.