Over 3 million Florida residents left without power in wake of Hurricane Milton

Late last night, Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key as a Category 3 storm, leaving a path of destruction and millions without power across the Florida peninsula.

According to Poweroutages.us, which tracks over 11.5 million customers in Florida, there’s currently 3,352,572 million without power in Florida, and over 2 million of those customers are in the Tampa Bay region.

TECO is reporting 591,875 customers without power, with a large of potions of outages in the Temple Terrace and Carrollwood areas. FPL says over 165,000 are without power in Manatee County, and 227,240 are experiencing outages in Sarasota County. 

Duke Energy is reporting 415,457 customers without power in Pinellas County, and over 89,000 in Pasco. While Polk County has nearly 60,000 without power, and Hernando has another 12,000.

Speaking to reporters last night, Florida Gov. DeSantis reiterated that the state was prepared for mass power outages.

“We have over 50,000 linemen and all the necessary equipment staged just outside of Milton’s path,” said DeSantis. “This is the largest staging of power restoration linemen in Florida’s history, and they are ready to get to work restoring power as soon as the storm passes.”

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This article appears in Oct 10-16, 2024.