Widespread power outages expected in Florida as Milton looms

AccuWeather

AccuWeather speaks with Melissa Seixas of Duke Energy Florida where the company is preparing for widespread power outages expected in the state's west coast as powerful Hurricane Milton looms.

Transcript

00:00With this being such a rare hurricane path coming into the Tampa area, are your teams

00:05preparing any differently for this storm? Well you're right on target when you talk about the

00:12path of this storm for Duke Energy Florida. If it comes in around the Pinellas County area,

00:17we serve the entire county of Pinellas and all through that I-4 corridor where it's showing

00:23that Milton will track. So we serve through all of those counties that then lead to Orange County,

00:29Osceola, Seminole, Volusia. So this is going to be a multi-county impact for us, a big part of our

00:37service area. You are accurate in stating that we are expecting and our customers should expect

00:43extensive power outages. This is a storm that the state of Florida hasn't seen in decades and so

00:52the extent of it is really unknown, but we are prepared. We have about 16,000 resources

01:00that are mobilizing right now either here already in the state of Florida or on their way. That

01:06includes line personnel, vegetation management, damage assessment, and of course staffing that

01:12we place in emergency operating centers both at the state and the county. We're communicating with

01:17our customers with preparedness messages and also being very transparent about the extent of

01:24outages. We do not have an estimated time of restoration right now and the other part of

01:30our communication or our preparation is also ensuring that our employees are safe. We have

01:36many of our employees are in evacuation zones so we're working with them on their plans to evacuate

01:41and then be able to execute their storm role virtually if they have to until they can either

01:48return to their work location or in some cases even return to the state if they decided to leave

01:54the state of Florida. Unique challenges for everyone who's in the path of Milton. How will

01:58the possible 10 to 15 foot even up to 20 feet of storm surge impact some of the coastal communities

02:04and the challenges with the power grid there? Yeah Milton is not going to spare us on any front

02:11of storm surge much like we just saw less than two weeks ago with Hurricane Helene.

02:17What that did to the barrier islands and the infrastructure there which is a lot of underground

02:21it literally swept very large pieces of equipment off of their pads you know down the roads into

02:28streets and so much of the infrastructure that we rebuilt less than two weeks ago

02:35is very susceptible to the storm surge that we expect to see with Milton and also the wind.

02:43Poles and wires overhead will be susceptible to interference from that's created from the wind so

02:50every aspect of this when Milton will not spare us anything. As president of Duke Energy Florida what

02:58is your message for those who did not evacuate and anything they can do to stay safe in the event

03:03of outages? We have been very very supportive of any and all emergency management evacuation orders.

03:13We are telling our customers really imploring them to hear adhere to and heed the warnings

03:20from those emergency professionals and I think if you look at any interstate in the state of Florida

03:26you can see the number of people that are evacuating so I think just on the heels of

03:31Helene that people are taking evacuations seriously and if they are going to stay in place

03:39because there are parts of the state obviously where they don't need to evacuate but they need

03:44to be prepared for extended days of outages so making sure that they have medication that they

03:50have water that they have food for their pets that they have non-perishable food for themselves

03:57that they have all of their important paperwork if possible and they need to be prepared to be

04:03in in place without power for an extended time.

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