Hurricane Ian: 1.1M in Florida Without Power

Over one million citizens in Florida have no power shortly after Hurricane Ian made landfall in the state’s southwestern area, and officials expect this number to go up.

According to a report by the Florida Division of Emergency Management on Wednesday afternoon, there had been 756,450 power outages across the state. By 5:30 p.m., the number went up to 1.1 million.

“We have over 1.1 million reported power outages. Now there are crews that are still working outside of southwest Florida, but just understand that number is going to grow,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said, predicting “more power outages as the storm moves through the center part of our state and before it exits into the Atlantic coast.”

“There are 100 portable cell phone towers ready to be deployed into southwest Florida once it is safe to enter in, should that be needed. We want to make sure people are staying out of the way of emergency crews and out of floodwaters and away from all downed power lines,” he went on to say, also mentioning that crews will start moving once it’s safe.

“Florida Department of Transportation is going to go in and clear those roadways. These are all on standby. They’re ready to go. They understand the importance of a really, really quick response,” he stated.

Florida has 42,000 linemen across the state who are on standby to respond to these outages.

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