Early storm bands of Hurricane Frances knocked out power to tens of thousands of Tampa Bay area residents Saturday evening, and utilities warned that far more outages are likely as tropical force winds whip the area.
Progress Energy Florida of St. Petersburg reported about 36,000 outages in its service territory, down from a peak of about 52,000. That included about 16,800 in Pinellas County. Tampa Electric Co. said it had up to about 7,900 customers without power, down from a peak of about 13,000, mostly in Hillsborough County. Meanwhile, Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative reported about 110 outages in Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties.
Those numbers were dwarfed by the more than 1-million without power reported by the state's largest electric company, Florida Power & Light of Juno Beach, which serves most of the Atlantic Coast. Statewide, about 2-million were without electricity Saturday night.
For the second time in weeks, the Tampa Bay area appears likely to avert the brunt of a major hurricane. But utility companies warned that unlike Hurricane Charley, which left local electricity service virtually unscathed, Frances has the potential to trigger widespread blackouts here. Saturday evening, wind gusts blew limbs into lines in the Tampa Bay area and knocked out power.
With tropical storm force winds expected throughout the area today, that could lead to "numerous outages that will take hours and even days to restore," Tampa Electric spokesman Ross Bannister said. "We'll work around the clock until we can pick everybody up."
Getting power fully restored quickly could be a tall order. Frances' large size and plodding speed could delay line crews, who don't head out to make repairs until conditions are safe, according to Eric Grant, Progress' director of power system operations.
Grant noted that even after line crews hit the road, widespread flooding expected from Frances could make some areas temporarily inaccessible. Heavy rainfall will also leave trees vulnerable to being toppled by storm winds, increasing the number of trees and branches that could drag down power lines.
Rising floodwaters could trip automatic shutdowns of substations, which take electricity delivered from high-voltage transmission lines and lower the voltage for delivery over power lines to local neighborhoods.
One substation outage can immediately cut power to anywhere from a couple thousand to 30,000 customers, Grant said. He added that it is sometimes possible to transfer the load to a nearby substation, particularly in densely populated areas such as Pinellas County.
"All of our distribution area is going to see this (storm) in one form or another," Grant said.
As they did for Charley, Progress and Tampa Electric have called in thousands of linemen from out-of-state utilities and contractors to help with the clean up.
Meanwhile, wireless companies reported scattered outages in the wake of Frances, mostly related to power outages. Cell towers are equipped with backup batteries that typically last several hours. Some also have backup diesel generators.
Verizon Wireless said it has about 28 mobile transmission sites available to beef up signal strength. Meanwhile, Sprint PCS spokeswoman Nancy Schwartz said the slow speed of Frances is holding up efforts to get portable generators to cell towers that have lost power.
Times staff writer Mike Konrad contributed to this report.
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