BlogWood: MT Archives

Frances

Spinning like a top off of Palm Beach - spreading squalls throughout the Tampa area and on into the Gulf.

My electricity has already been out twice, not counting the flickering and dimming incidents. We’ve had some strong winds and locally violent storms, but nothing major yet.

Local coverage

Also here

And here

1 million lose power to Frances

More than a million residents endured Hurricane Frances without electricity as high winds and other dangerous conditions forced utility crews to stop responding to customer calls for help.

With the stalled hurricane battering the coast, thousands of bunkered residents also lost their primary sources of information: cable television and the Internet.

The number of Floridians without power and cable was expected to rise as the hurricane crept ashore. Florida Power & Light warned customers to be prepared to spend days without light, air conditioning and refrigeration.

"People just need to plan for extended outages," FPL spokesman Bill Swank said.

At 5 p.m. Saturday, FPL reported that 1,070,500 customers had lost power in nine counties on the state's east coast even before Hurricane Frances came ashore. Tropical-storm-force winds and hurricane-forcegusts were enough.

According to FPL, 74 percent of Palm Beach County customers are without power, and that figure steadily increases farther up the coast. In Martin County, 88 percent of customers don't have electricity, and in St. Lucie County, 81 percent are without power.

Indian River has the highest percentage of outages, with 95 percent of FPL customers without power.

"Our restoration folks are just chomping at the bit to get out there and start restoring power, but we're in a situation now where it's not safe to go out now," FPL spokeswoman Kathy Scott said.

FPL crews worked through the night Friday and restored power to more than 300,000 customers. But workers were ordered to stop responding to calls when winds reached 35 mph.