(Reuters) – More than 350,000 Florida homes and businesses were without power on Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us data, as Hurricane Helene was expected to hit Florida’s Big Bend region.
Hurricane Helene has moved toward Florida’s Panhandle, bringing the threat of potentially deadly storm surge to much of the coast.
Helene has intensified into an extremely risky Category 4 hurricane and is approaching the northeastern Gulf Coast, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Thursday. It was expected to make landfall this evening.
The utility with the highest number of customers affected was Florida Power & Light Company, which had 137,897 customers without power.
Then it happened Duke energy (NYSE:) had 133,948 customers cut off in the state.
“We anticipate that landfall will cause the most significant damage to our infrastructure in the Panhandle and Big Bend areas, which will likely result in extended outages,” Todd Fountain, Duke Energy’s director of storm operations, said in a statement.
Here are the main outages for individual utilities in Florida:
Failures of energy companies
Florida Power & Light Company 137 897
Tampa Electric 58,430
Lee County Electric Cooperative 8074
Duke Energy 133948
Withlacoochee River Electric Coop 12140
Total 366,035
