Residents plead for power
Online restoration information may have been affected by hurricane, FPL says.
Florida Power & Light Co. customers in Broward and Palm Beach counties who are still without power after Hurricane Irma say they feel the electric utility is not being truthful with them.
“Just don’t lie to us,” said Mindy Yianilos, 57, of Coral Ridge, who has been without power since Sept. 10. She said FPL’s online system to check power outages and restoration said her power had been restored on Thursday, but it was not.
“We opened another ticket on Sept. 18. Last night at 6 p.m., we found out we need a new pole,” she said. “I’m willing to wait my turn, but don’t keep stringing me along.”
FPL spokesman Bryan Garner said when FPL’s communications systems are compromised after the storm, “the reading may not indicate that the customer is out of power. What we receive is the last information the meter could communicate before the storm hit ... It’s in these limited situations where customers see their power is restored, but are still out of power.”
Fort Lauderdale residents in Victoria Park, Coral Ridge, Poinsettia Heights, Sailboat Bend and Coral Shore, and Riverstone in Davie, and others say they’re still out of power even though FPL is claiming 99 percent restoration in Broward County.
In Palm Beach County, some residents in Boca Raton also say they don’t have power, despite FPL reporting that more than 99 percent of its system has been restored.
Garner said FPL “has provided the best information we could about estimated times of restoration.”
He said the vast majority of the company’s customers in Broward and Palm Beach counties should be restored by Tuesday. Remaining outages, he said, may require specialized work to repair significant damage caused by tornadoes, flooding, trees and debris.
David Bauman, 50, who has power neither at his Coral Ridge home or his law office in Plantation, said FPL’s online system shows his home and office as resto-
“I’m willing to wait my turn, but don’t keep stringing me along.” Mindy Yianilos, Coral Ridge
ration “completed.”
“The entire block has been out,” he said.
When he reached an FPL customer service representative, Bauman said he was told “you need to flip your breakers.” That was not the case, he said.
Dawn Meyers, 54, of Victoria Park, said the restoration estimate for her home keeps saying midnight of whatever day it is, and the power is still out. When she calls FPL customer service, after charging her phone in her car, representatives “just have a prepared script,” she said.
Meyers said out-ofstate crews that have come to Victoria Park tell her they can’t fix her power because they have to call dispatch for their next job. They described the restoration effort as “chaotic” and “disorganized,” she said.
“Now they’re sending us to Tamarac,” she said a crew member told her.
FPL has had more than 20,000 crews from states including California and Illinois.
Nearly 4.5 million homes and businesses that get their electricity from FPL lost during last weekend’s Hurricane Irma. In South Florida, nearly 2.5 million lost power.
As of late Tuesday morning, FPL still had 60 customers restore in Palm Beach County; 3,600 customers in Broward; and 16,950 in MiamiDade, according to FPL’s website.
FPL has spent nearly $3 billion to updated its electric grid in Florida since 2006.