Since Tuesday, the many Floridians who fled the state — or at very least, southerly areas expected to see the brunt of the hurricane — have been clogging the state's southbound roadways in their efforts to get back home and back to life as we knew it before the storm.
But traffic has been rough; on Tuesday travel times from nearly doubled for some (we know of one family who took at least 15 hours to get home from the Charleston, SC area, a trip that usually takes no more than nine hours).
If that all wasn't enough, state officials raised the specter of closing down I-75 because of potentially dangerous flood waters from the Santa Fe River in Alachua County threatening to spill over onto the road.
But on Thursday, the News Service of Florida reports, the Florida Department of Transportation announced it wouldn't be shutting down that stretch of highway after all because flooding on the river has begun to recede.
“As of this morning, FDOT engineers and state meteorologists do not believe that the Santa Fe River will reach a level to make the interstate unsafe,” a news release from the Department of Transportation and the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles said.
But NSF reports that portions of some back roads — U.S. 27 and U.S. 41 — remain closed due to flood levels.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Floridians remain without power. Duke Energy Florida said Thursday morning that 569,853 customers (or about a third of its customer base) were still without power, while some 824,084 customers have had theirs restored. In Pinellas County 184,054 were still without power as of Thursday morning.
Duke has assured residents in Pinellas that power will be fully restored to all residents by Friday evening.
This article appears in Sep 14-21, 2017.