FPL answers questions about power surges and outages, days after Milton

Days after Hurricane Milton tore through Florida, people coast to coast are still experiencing power outages and power surges, and now we’re hearing from Florida Power and Light (FPL).

“This morning, before I left for work, it was very close together every like 10 minutes, five minutes the power would go out and then shoot right back on,” Al Salemme, who lives in Estero, said. “It just became an on-again, off-again thing. And it was, you know, kind of wreaking havoc with everyone because they were getting their generators going, and then they had to go ahead and break them all down again.”

It’s not a problem unique to Lee County or even unique to neighborhoods.

On Monday, Collier County Public Schools said they had to have early dismissal for two of their schools because of power outages.

The power has since been restored, but neighbors in Naples Village, like David Johnston, said the power surges have become a nightly occurrence.

“What’s happened for the last four days in a row is that we get electricity on at some point in the daytime. Could be seven in the morning, it might be five in the evening, might be seven in the evening, but consistently, we lose power between 2:30 a.m. and 3 a.m. every night,” Johnston said.

These surges even led to some neighbors emailing WINK news regarding concerns about their appliances.

“We are concerned about our appliances and cell phones that are plugged in. Is it doing any harm to anything plugged in or electronic?” Sharon Fay, who lives in Estero, asked.

Their concerns were brought straight to the source. Mike Mazur with FPL said that any major storm surges are expected, but neighbors should rest assured that they won’t stick around forever.

“When storms like this hit, this is a big storm, widespread impacts, lots of damage to trees, to debris. This can loosen up things in the electrical grid, and it is a normal thing for folks to experience these momentary outages,” Mazur said. “No electrical system is Hurricane-proof. The restoration has gone very well so far, but no doubt there will be some lingering effects that will taper off in time.”

Mazur said FPL has many people on the ground who have traveled from far away to ensure that power around the state is restored.

“I’m here at the Port Charlotte Mall. This is one of 25 staging and parking sites that we set up prior to the storm impacting the coast. We are in the midst of restoration that we did plan for. Our restoration is ahead of schedule. At this point, we’ve restored power to about 95% a little north of 95% of those impacted from Hurricane Milton. At this point, about 1.9 million customers,” Mazur said.

Mazur also addressed neighbors’ concerns regarding risk and issues from surges.
“There are no risks at all. This is just one of the lingering effects after a major hurricane rolls through a populated area, and really, this storm impacted our entire service area, really from one side of the state to the other,” Mazur said.

Mazur said the top priority for FPL is restoring power to those who don’t have it.

If you want to track outages in your area, you can look at FPL’s outage map here or LCEC’s outage map here.