About 1.5 million homes and businesses in Florida and Georgia remained without power on Friday after Hurricane Irma, including 46 of Florida’s nearly 700 nursing homes caught in the deadly storm’s path.
Irma, which ranked as one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record before striking the U.S. mainland as a Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 10, killed at least 84 people. Several hard-hit Caribbean islands, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, suffered more than half the fatalities.
Florida Power & Light, owned by NextEra Energy Inc (NEE.N) and the state’s biggest electric company, said it was working aggressively to restore power to the 23 percent of its customers still in the dark.
The utility has never before had to deal with a storm affecting its entire service territory, company spokesman Rob Gould said.
‘It will go down as one of the largest and most complex restoration efforts in history,’ he said. ‘Now we are literally into the house-to-house combat mode.’
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