Duke Energy said it is preparing for more than 1 million power outages in Florida after Hurricane Milton makes landfall Wednesday night on the state's Gulf Coast.
As of 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center said Milton was a Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 165 mph. The storm is expected to weaken as it approaches Florida but the hurricane center predicated a storm surge of about 10 to 15 feet in the Tampa Bay area.
"Based on the current track, Hurricane Milton will impact the most populated areas of our service territory," Todd Fountain, Duke Energy's Florida storm director, said Monday in a news release. "Despite extensive system improvements and rigorous tree trimming, the strong winds and flooding will cause power outages. Customers should expect significant damage and make immediate preparations for extended power outage durations."
Duke Energy, which supplies electricity to 2 million residential, commercial, and industrial customers across 13,000 square miles in Florida, said Tuesday it will deploy 16,000 power line technicians, vegetation workers, damage assessors, and support personnel. The company said it will begin restoration efforts as soon as weather and other conditions allow.
Meanwhile, Florida's largest electric utility, Florida Power and Light (FPL), which has more than 12 million customers, said it is mobilizing crews across the state in anticipation of Milton's landfall. The company said it has a workforce of 14,500 at hand, with help from 37 other states. Like Duke Energy, FPL said restoration efforts will start as soon as the conditions allow.
"Hurricane Milton is going to bring heavy rains, damaging winds, life-threatening storm surge and flooding," Armando Pimentel, FPL's president and CEO, said Tuesday in a news release. "Customers need to be prepared. This storm will bring extended outages. That said, I want to assure our customers we are prepared and will be working around-the-clock to restore power."
Milton is the second hurricane to hit Florida in the past two weeks. Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida's Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 26, reportedly killed at least 230 people as it wound its way through Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas.
FPL said torrential rainfall over the past week across the state and the lingering impacts from Helene saturated the ground and left storm debris ahead of Milton's projected landfall.
Unlike Helene, Milton is on path to hit heavily populated areas along Florida's Gulf Coast as it makes its way across the state to the Atlantic Ocean. The Tampa Bay area has a population of more than 3.3 million, and the 15 Florida counties under mandatory evacuation orders have a combined population of about 7.2 million people, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Duke Energy is still trying to restore power in areas of the Carolinas ravaged by Helene. Duke Energy estimated just over 197,000 customers were without power in North Carolina alone, according to the Asheville Citizen Times, but that number has decreased by about 350,000 over the past week.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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