Charlie went right over where I lived in in Orlando. My parents were lucky, they lost power for 12 hours and they had no major damage. My apartment never lost power. Neither did my sisters apartment but she had water damage from water coming thought the walls. I was out of state during Francis and none of my family lost power for Jeanne, but I had friends that lost power for like a week with each storm. I was about ready to move to Nebraska after that hurricane season.
Very surprising that anyone in Charley's path escaped at least a brief outage. The numbers were unprecedented at the time:
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Aug. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In the aftermath
of Hurricane Charley, Progress Energy Florida has restored power to the vast
majority of the company's customers capable of receiving service.
(Logo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020923/CHM008LOGO-c )
In the hardest hit portion of Progress Energy's service territory, Polk
County, the company has restored power to nearly all customers. The company
continues a pole-by-pole inspection to identify isolated outages not caused by
damage to homes, weatherheads or meter bases.
As a result of Hurricane Charley's devastation, more than 2 million
Florida electricity customers -- including 502,000 served by Progress Energy
-- were without power beginning Friday night, Aug. 13.
Progress Energy mobilized more than 6,000 line crews, tree crews, first
responders and support staff in anticipation of extensive restoration efforts.
They worked around the clock, making steady progress throughout last week in
restoring service.
"Progress Energy employees worked tirelessly to restore power to our
customers," said Progress Energy President and CEO Bill Habermeyer. "This has
been a trying week for many of our customers, and we appreciate their patience
and understanding as we faced many difficult challenges to get their power
back on. While we are still working in parts of the state to rebuild and
repair portions of our infrastructure, all of us can be very proud of the
progress we've made so far."
Since restoration began, crews have ordered and used supplies in
astounding numbers:
Total wire: 5,838,521 feet (1,106 miles; distance between Orlando and Chicago)
Insulators (porcelain support between wire and pole): 43,494
Distribution poles: 2,285 (17.3 miles laid end to end)
Transformers (overhead and underground): 5,779
Splices (used to connect severed lines): 127,184
In addition,
79 of 83 substations have been returned to service and 578 of
700 miles of transmission line have been replaced.
Hurricane Charley caused great damage and generated large amounts of
debris, requiring massive clean-up efforts. Customers should refer to their
city or county debris-removal guidelines for further information. Progress
Energy is not responsible for the removal of tree and yard waste resulting
from Hurricane Charley. Customers with concerns can call Progress Energy's
customer service line at 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx.
Due to the scope of damage by Hurricane Charley, Progress Energy put all
available resources -- including meter readers -- into storm restoration work.
As a result, we have estimated the usage on many customers' meters that would
have been read the week of August 16th in Central Florida, and these customers
will receive an estimated bill for the most recent month's usage. Progress
Energy will adjust bills in the following month's statement to reflect the
time customers were out of service due to outages caused by Hurricane Charley.
