37 percent of Manatee County residents without power

About 42 percent of Manatee County residents woke up Tuesday without power, and that number was down to 37 percent as of 6 p.m., according to a power outage update provided by the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

FPL Power Tracker can be used to find out the status of your outage.

Hurricane Irma left 5.5 million of the more than 10 million Florida power customers waiting for the electricity to be turned back on.

Manatee residents are served by Florida Power & Light and cooperatives like Peace River, as 69,200 power customers are affected.

In Sarasota County, 127,770 customers out of 263,835 were in the dark.

Of Peace River Electric Cooperative’s power meters in Manatee, 5,404 out of 19,988 were without power. According to a press release, crews from Louisiana arrived Monday evening, and more would be coming Tuesday.

Rob Gould, vice president and chief communications officer for FPL, said during an update at its command center Tuesday morning that 20,000 employees had been dispatched to start “day and night” restoration.

On the west coast of Florida, customers can expect to be “essentially restored” by Sept. 22.

This was the first time that all the counties in FPL’s range had been impacted by Irma, Gould said.

First, FPL gets its generators back online, then it hones in on fixing critical infrastructure like hospitals or 911 call centers, and then businesses and homes.

As for the the east coast of Florida, president and CEO Eric Silagy said there would be “more traditional repairs.”

“We have the largest restoration workforce in U.S. history responding to the worst storm in our company’s history,” Silagy said in a press release Monday. “Our crews are out restoring power, and every hour of every day more and more people are getting their lights back. That said, we anticipate that much of the electric system in Southwest Florida will require a complete rebuild, which could take weeks.”

Gould said there would be a daily briefing from the company.

“We know it’s extremely uncomfortable and we’re asking you for your patience,” Gould said.

As far as other services, Verizon Wireless had close to 90 percent of its facilities in service, according to a press release. More than 40 percent of company-owned stores were open Tuesday, and residents are invited to come in to charge their devices.

Sprint has waived all text and data overage coverages for those impacted by Hurricane Irma. It’s retroactive to Sept. 8 and goes through Friday. Verizon announced a similar waiving of charges last weekend.

This story was originally published September 12, 2017 at 9:21 AM with the headline "37 percent of Manatee County residents without power."