Published on August 30, 2023 at 11:40 am
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Although Hurricane Idalia was causing limited damage Wednesday in Northeast Florida, power outages were rising rapidly across the region.
JEA reported 11,000 customers without power early Wednesday afternoon. Clay County Electric reported 35,537 of its 190,278 customers without power, according to PowerOutage.us, which collects data from utilities.
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Statewide, 278,313 people were without power, most in the Big Bend region. Florida Power & Light Co., the state’s biggest utility with 5.8 million customers, said 38,979 had no power.
JEA listed 41 outages in the area, with the Northside particularly affected. An outage near Capper Road in the College Park neighborhood affected nearly 1,900 customers. A few blocks away, an outage along Dunn Avenue left 2,000 people without power.
The number of people without power had risen significantly since 10 a.m. when about 500 people were without electricity.
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Earlier Wednesday, Pedro Melendez, JEA’s vice president of planning, engineering and construction, said that the utility’s fuel less stations and wastewater facilities were using backup power but that the overall system remained intact.
CEO Jay Stowe said JEA had 2,100 employees on duty, along with 500 from outside the area, to help get power back on as soon as possible.
“We’ll respond as quickly as we can,” Stowe said. “If you have generators, please use them safely and and stay off the roads to allow the folks that are going to be out there trying to fix this for us to be able to do that.”
If winds reach 40 mph, JEA crews will stop work because it is unsafe.
