The state says about 7,500 people were in almost 100 shelters as of Friday, and that the Red Cross planned to open four shelters in the Keys once the area was properly surveyed.
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The storm – which has claimed more than two dozen lives in the U.S. – struck southwestern Florida on Sunday morning as a category four hurricane before weakening to a tropical depression on Monday.
Long said at a briefing Friday that good progress is being made in getting people back into their homes or into temporary housing such as apartments or hotels.
For days, evacuees from the Lower and Middle Keys were turned away from a checkpoint state authorities set up near mile marker 74 on the Overseas Highway.
A Reuters report showed that NextEra Energy Inc’s, NEE.N, FPL, Florida’s biggest electric company, Friday, said about 1.1 million customers had no power, while Duke Energy Corp (DUK.N) reported that more than 371,000 customers were in the dark and Tampa Electric, a unit of Emera Inc (EMA.TO), reported about 39,000 were without power. Power has been restored for at least 89%, the agency said.
As Florida residents try to return to their homes after Hurricane Irma, many were faced with blocked roads due to stranded cars, traffic jams and gas shortages.
As of 5 p.m. on Saturday, Florida Power & Light said about 735,000 customers, or 15 percent of the utility’s customers, were without electricity. Residents returning to the hardest-hit areas should know that services are nearly non-existent. Once immediate material needs have been met, the focus of the fund will shift to helping those that have been hit the hardest do things like recover lost wages and replace essential items.
Perry said 60,000 utility workers from the US and Canada are working to get power back on. There were more than 40 storm-related deaths. These include hospitals, key government buildings, schools, sewer facilities, water pumping stations and grocery stores. Multiple islands remain off-limits to residents.
Power outages hit other Southeastern states as the storm moved north, including Georgia. Nelson, D-Fla., and Rubio, R-Fla., called on federal health officials to get involved. “You want to come back to a sewer system that works”. What was it like coming back? It’s all free and available for pickup, although she said if someone can not come and get it she will find a way to have it delivered.
Similarly, why did this evacuation only occur after three people had already perished?
Cheyanne Spencer, 25, evacuated from her apartment in Key West to a hotel in Fort Myers, where she weathered the storm with family members.
Tell us if you left Southwest Florida in advance of Irma’s arrival.
The lawsuit alleges that the Rehabilitation Center failed to adequately prepare for Irma after hurricane and storm-surge warnings were first issued for Broward County on September 7. They include 27 in Florida, four in SC and three in Georgia. As news broke of the tragedy on Wednesday, Levin and Perconti founding partner Steven Levin told HLN’s Carol Costello that a Florida nursing home who knew to expect high temperatures at this time of year and left their residents “vulnerable to something as simple as a power failure or an air conditioning breakdown is inexplicable”.
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People who fled their homes in hard-hit islands including St. Martin and the U.S. Virgin Islands that were all but cut off from the world for days arrived in San Juan late Tuesday.
