Florida utility works to restore power

SOUTH FLORIDA - During the first full day of restoration work after Hurricane Wilma virtually paralyzed South Florida, Florida Power & Light Co. said it turned the lights back on for 412,700 customers across the state, leaving more than 2.8 million still without power.

In the tri-county region, the area most severely impacted by the storm, the company had restored power to 6,500 customers in Broward County, 25,000 in Palm Beach and 86,100 in Miami-Dade by 9 p.m. October 25.

In Broward and Palm Beach counties, more than 95 percent of subscribers who lost power are still waiting for service.

As the company continued to assess damage in its 20,000 square mile service area, about 6,000 power lines and tree-trimming workers, including FPL employees and otherscontracted from out of state, began the mammoth task of cutting through trees, branches and debris that damaged power lines and substations, replacing toppled utility poles and replacing transformers and repairing damaged equipment. Repairs are carried out around the clock, with crews working 16-hours shifts and resting for 8 hours.

"It's a brutal process," said FPL president Armando Olivera. "We don't like going through this any more than anyone else," he added. "Our employees are also our customers and they're going through the same thing as other customers."

About 95 percent of customers should have their power back within three weeks, but the majority will be back online sooner, he said. FPL will have better estimates of restoration dates after full assessments are completed.

Olivera, whose company had to deal with power outages affecting millions of people after three major hurricanes last year, repeated his call for patience. "We understand how much people depend on electricity for their daily lives," he said.

FPL has contracted about 3,000 additional out-of-state workers who are scheduled to arrive here by Sunday, said Geisha Williams, FPL's vice president of electric distribution, and will bring in as many as needed to get the job done.

It is also setting up 15 staging areas, or outdoor work centers, located near the most heavily impacted areas. Most of these will be in South Florida, where 58 percent of the company's 4.3 million customers are located.

Olivera said that hurricane force winds and flying debris caused heavy damage to the company's high-power transmission lines, which connect generating plants with substations serving customers. About forty of these substations were back online by Tuesday afternoon. The storm, which cut a 180-mile swath as it passed through the state, also split and knocked over rows of wooden utility poles and concrete poles. The company, which is concentrating its initial efforts on repairing the transmission system, substations and critical services such as police, fire, hospitals, government offices and communications, has not seen such extensive damage in previous storms, he added.

Responding to an oft-repeated suggestion that the company could avoid many storm outages by placing its entire system underground, Williams pointed out that 54 percent of customers in Broward County already have underground lines, but Wilma nonetheless cut power to 97 or 98 percent of subscribers.

Under grounding the company's entire system would entail a "mind- boggling" expenditure estimated at between $55 billion and $80 billion, a sum that would have to be paid by customers. Besides, she added, this system is no panacea, since underground lines take longer to repair than overhead lines when flooding occurs and since some part of the system would still remain above ground.

"There is no magic bullet to stop damage from hurricane winds, flooding and flying debris," Olivera said.