More than 3-million Floridians, and hundreds of thousands in the Tampa Bay area, remained without power late Monday, as at least one local utility signaled that a small number of its customers may face a week or more of cold showers and no air conditioning.
Strong gusting wind that persisted after Hurricane Frances prevented Progress Energy Florida and Tampa Electric Co. from sending large numbers of line crews into the field until Monday afternoon, holding up repair efforts and frustrating customers.
Until the line crews hit the road, repairs were limited mostly to emergency work and simple repairs that could be completed from the ground, said Tony Pearcey, a Progress operations manager who is supervising bucket trucks based out of the utility's St. Petersburg operations center on 25th Street N.
"They've worked in the rain, heat and cold," Pearcey said of his company's linemen. "But the wind is usually one of the deciding factors to keep us grounded."
Tampa Electric warned early Monday that it may take up to 10 days to two weeks for it to complete what is shaping up to be the largest power-restoration effort in its history. But Tom Hernandez, vice president of energy delivery for the Tampa utility, said later in the day that Tampa Electric was still completing its damage assessment. He said he hoped the company could shorten the restoration forecast today.
"Please be patient," Hernandez said. "Give us two to three days and I think we'll get a significant number of these customers back on."
The lingering bad weather not only slowed the dispatch of local crews, but it also helped delay the arrival of out-of-state workers who won't be in place and ready to work until Wednesday morning.
The sustained heavy winds made it unsafe to drive the large bucket trucks into the area, and in some cases crews were unable to arrange overnight lodging along the way because of the massive evacuation of Floridians that took place before the the storm, Hernandez said.
Still, utilities said they are encouraged that the work will likely be restricted mostly to restoring downed distribution lines - the power lines that deliver electricity to local neighborhoods - rather than rebuilding high-voltage transmission lines and substations, as they did following Charley.
Despite widespread flooding in Tampa, Hernandez said most of Tampa Electric's 25 substations that were taken off line by Frances were damaged by flying debris, rather than rising water.
But such assessments did little to help local customers adapt to life without electricity.
After losing power early Sunday in St. Petersburg, Snell Isle resident David Johnson, his wife, assistant state attorney Caryle Johnson, and their three kids were stuck making hamburgers and grilled-cheese sandwiches over a portable camp stove and playing Scrabble by the light of two Coleman propane lanterns.
David Johnson, a 64-year-old infectious-disease specialist at Bay Pines VA Medical Center in St. Petersburg, said Progress repair crews were quick to restore power after an earlier outage on Saturday.
But since losing electricity again Sunday, "I have yet to see a power truck," he said Monday afternoon.
"For a while, I knew they couldn't come out because of the wind, but the winds have long since died and we still haven't seen any trucks."
Customer frustration occasionally led to misunderstandings. One Citrus County resident called Sumter Electric CooperativeMonday to complain that linemen for the utility were spending hours hanging out at a Sonny's Bar-B-Q in Inverness. What the customer didn't realize, said Sumter Electric public affairs director Barry Bowman, was that the restaurant agreed to accommodate large numbers of linemen for lunch.
What the customer thought were the same bucket trucks sitting in the parking lot were actually a series of trucks over several hours, Bowman said.
"You go from that to people who bring food out to crews and are actually totally understanding," he said. "To these people we express our gratitude and deep appreciation."
