JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As Jacksonville residents awoke six days after Hurricane Matthew ripped up the east coast of Florida, 12,881 JEA customers were still without electricity. By Thursday afternoon, the outages were down to 9,543.
At a Wednesday afternoon news conference, the city-owned utility's CEO Paul McElroy took personal responsibility for making a commitment that all power would be restored by Monday night.
McElroy knows there’s a lot of frustration and discomfort, but praised the dedication and professionalization of his workers and wanted the public not to take any of their frustration out on them.
"Planning for the storm probably started about a week before the storm occurred. We started with a soft opening of our emergency operations center last Wednesday evening. We then went to full Level 4 emergency control around noon on Thursday," McElroy said. "We have representatives who left their day jobs to work nothing but storm and restoration."
At the peak of the outages Friday evening, as Hurricane Matthew moved away, 245,000 customers, or 55 percent of Jacksonville residents, were out of power. Wednesday afternoon, after 106 hours of restoration efforts, 95 percent of customers had their power back.
JEA had 1,500 employees working on the remaining outages Wednesday -- four times their normal daily line crews. They were assisted by 350 mutual aid workers from utilities from as far away as Tennessee, Texas and Oklahoma, and another 30 workers from Duke Emergency were expected to join the effort Thursday.
The utility had also doubled the staff working in its call center, reducing wait time to under one minute.
McElroy called the damage from this one in 100-year storm event "devastating." He estimated the cost of the repairs will total at least $30 million, likely more.
Customers can go online to see the current status of JEA power outages. JEA continued to ask its customers to exercise patience and that the restoration times on their website are not necessarily accurate.
McElroy said a full evaluation would be conducted of JEA's response to the hurricane.
Customers without power frustrated by utility's false promises
Wednesday marked five days without electricity for many residents in the Julington Creek Plantation area.
Hurricane Matthew caused power outages in 17 of the 25 homes in the Plantation Island Neighborhood. Neighbors said they have been receiving robocalls from JEA every hour and the power restoration deadline has been pushed back every time. They said they wish the utility company would have never even put out the Monday night deadline.
"It went out, like, Friday around 10:30 a.m. and it hasn't been on since," said 17-year-old Sidney Duke.
Duke said the internet is vital for her classes at school.
"Most of my work, homework and stuff is online, so I haven't been able to get that completed at home so I've been going to a friend's house or do it at school so I could get that done," she said.
Though being without power has been frustrating, Plantation Island Homeowners Association President Rick Smith said it's the false promises provided by JEA that have many upset.
"If you tell me it's going to be on next Monday, I'd say, 'OK. This is what we're going to have to deal with.' But don't tell me it's going to be on at 6 o'clock and then it's not, because we planned. People have a life to deal with. I mean that's the worst thing I've ever seen in my life," Smith said.
JEA has not give any more promised restoration estimates, but customers said they just hope the utility company is more prepared for the next storm.
Lights turned back on in other counties
On Wednesday, outages in St. Johns and Flagler counties fell below 1,000, which means 99 percent of homes and businesses had power, with Florida Power and Light continuing to work on pockets and individual homes with outages.
On Thursday, FPL said it had finished restoring electricity to all of the customers who lost power last week. FPL said more than 1.2 million customers were affected and that it restored power to more than 1 million within two days after the storm left the areas served by the utility. Contractors and workers from other utilities helped in restoration.
"We understand the frustration that comes from being without power and sincerely thank our customers for their patience and understanding," Eric Silagy, president and CEO of the utility, said in a prepared statement Thursday. "We especially want to thank those customers in the hardest-hit areas who received multiple estimates of when their service would be restored. Unfortunately, significant damage and massive tree devastation required us to not just restore service, but rebuild electric infrastructure from the ground up."
FPL crews that completed work in St. Johns and Flagler counties began to assist JEA with restorations.
Clay Electric said it concluded restoration efforts before 10 p.m. Monday, having restored power to more than 73,000 members in a three-day period. The cooperative has ended its Emergency Operation Plan status and is returning to normal operating activities.
A combined workforce of more than 150 Clay Electric personnel and 650 construction and right of way personnel from other electric co-ops and contractors from around the Southeast U.S. were involved in the restoration effort.
“We appreciate all the hard work from our personnel and those who came to help us in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew,” said General Manager and CEO Ricky Davis. “We also appreciate the patience of our members during this difficult and challenging ordeal, and all the kind words of support expressed by our members.”
Any customer without power should report their outage at clayelectric.com or 888-434-9844.
By Tuesday evening, Georgia Power reported that there were only 56 customers without power in Glynn County and fewer than five Camden County.