By LOUIS HAU, DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN and LEONORA LAPETER
Published September 9, 2004
TAMPA - Wednesday morning, Michael DeAngelis entered his third day without power.
The 57-year-old waiter took a shower to cool off, then embarked on a short walk outside his Davis Islands home to buy a couple of local newspapers.
By the time he returned to his house on Columbia Drive, he was drenched with sweat.
"Inside the house, outside the house, it was just miserable," DeAngelis said. He plopped down on his sofa with his newspapers, prepared to read about other people's miseries as well.
Then he saw a vision so beautiful it made him jump from his seat: his chandelier twinkled brightly.
His power was back on. His watch read 10:40 a.m. DeAngelis quickly shut all his windows and cranked on his air conditioner. Then he vacuumed his living room, which had been strewn with mud and leaves.
"I was very happy," he said, grinning broadly.
Tampa Electric spokesman Ross Bannister said the company expects to fully restore power to its customers by the end of Friday.
Tampa Bay utilities continued to make headway Wednesday in restoring electricity to customers, but the efforts had begun to slow as line crews turned their attention to the scores of smaller repairs that affect fewer customers.
"Early on you get all that low-hanging fruit," Progress Energy Florida spokesman Mike Hughes said of the restoration process. "Later, you get into outages that affect fewer and fewer customers ... It's a dynamic we see in every major storm."
Both companies said the power outages have cost them financially, reducing electricity sales and hurting third-quarter revenues. Progress Energy is contemplating a possible rate hike as a result.
The St. Petersburg utility said Wednesday the recovery costs it has incurred from Frances and Hurricane Charley are likely to exceed the $40.9-million it has in its storm reserve fund.
Investor-owned utilities are allowed to accumulate such funds via monthly customer bills to help cover the cost of restoring power after major storms. If the costs exceed what a utility has in its reserve fund, the company may ask the Florida Public Service Commission for permission to add a surcharge to customer bills to make up the difference.
Hughes said it was too early to determine whether the company would ask for a surcharge.
Officials with Tampa Electric Co., which has a much smaller service territory than Progress, think the utility's reserve fund of about $40-million should be enough to cover costs from Frances and Charley, Bannister said.
Hughes said financial concerns were not Progress's top priority at the moment. "We are exclusively focused on restoration and not calculating costs," he said.
That's certainly the focus of customers still without power, for whom the nickname Sunshine State has taken on a whole new meaning, and candlelight dining has lost its charm. The power went out Saturday in the Reddington family's New Suburb Beautiful home. By Wednesday, their hampers were filled with grungy clothes and the last towel had been used.
Kerry Reddington, 47, knew she had to do something.
So the mother of two loaded up her minivan with the dirty linens and headed to a coin laundry on Kennedy Boulevard. The last time she did this she was in college.
"In my single days, I went to Laundromats, borrowed friend's microwaves to cook food," Reddington said as she folded clothes. "I feel like I'm back in my single days again."
Reddington spent about $15 to wash and dry five loads of clothes, and despite the reference to campus living, she was feeling anything but nostalgic.
"This is 2004," she said. "Tampa should have been more prepared. This wasn't even a hurricane. It was flood waters and high winds."
