When The Power Goes Out, Know How To Cope
Published: May 21, 2006
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TAMPA - Experts still can't predict exactly where a hurricane will hit or how powerful it will be.
But there is one bankable certainty: If a strong storm hits, you are going to be without electricity.
If you're lucky, it will not be long enough to stretch from inconvenience into hardship.
Still, you'll sweat. Your food will spoil, and you'll take cold showers. After sundown, only a battery-powered radio and a flashlight separates you from life in the 1800s.
"The lack of lights at night. That was a big problem," said Ronni Kustin who spent seven days without power in her Magdalene Manor home after the 2004 storms.
Last year, storms generally spared the Tampa Bay area and West Central Florida. It was Florida Power & Light Co.'s turn when Hurricane Wilma snuffed power to more than 3 million people, some for weeks.
"We were lucky in 2005. We sent our crews to other areas," said Bill Whale, vice president of energy delivery with Tampa Electric Co.
In 2004, though, Charley, Frances and Jeanne put more than 2.6 million customers of TECO and Progress Energy Florida in the dark.
In the powerless homes, food in the freezer spoiled.
"If it melts, leave the door closed until the power goes on and let it freeze again. Otherwise, the smell is awful," said Kustin, who swabbed freezers with bleach after each storm.
She dispersed her husband and three children to friends' houses with power. She stayed and tended to the two dogs.
"It was hot. It was really hot," she said. "I spent a lot of time at the mall and in front of the frozen food in Publix."
Not that the power companies were idle. About 80 percent of the customers had lights and air conditioning in two days. The other 20 percent took longer, sometimes much longer.
In the immediate hours after a storm, crews hit the roads along with police and rescue workers to assess and triage the damage. Crews of two workers also seek small, immediate repairs that can get power back on.
"They're the tip of the spear," Whale said.
Hospitals, emergency management centers, fire and police stations, shelters and sewer lift stations all get the first attention. If you're on a line that powers one of those facilities, you may get your lights on quickly.
After more critical places are done, crews turn to repairs that get power to the most people.
"Then it gets down to house to house and neighborhood by neighborhood," said C.J. Drake, spokesman for Progress Energy.
And you wait, jealous of those with power.
"You begin to wonder why they have power and you don't. You start to think, 'Everyone forgot about me,'" Kustin said.
But the seemingly random power returns are at least democratic. She said TECO executives in her neighborhood were without power, too.
For this year, TECO and Progress beefed up their call center staffs and added automated phone services for customers to report outages. More important, you should get an estimate of when your lights will come on.
"Customers really appreciate if we could give some kind of guidance when power would be restored," said Dee Brown, vice president of TECO customer service and regulatory affairs.
Some residents, though, didn't wait for trucks with buckets and resorted to generators.
Since 2003, when a massive power failure hit the northeast United States, portable generator sales have increased more than 20 percent a year, said Scott Alderton, director of marketing for Briggs & Stratton Power Products.
Sales of larger, built-in machines capable of powering your entire house with a price tag of $3,000 to $5,000 tripled in areas hit by storms, he said.
"They were so loud at night," Kustin said of the generators. She has no plans to buy the new, must-have home hurricane accessory.
And the rumble of generators in a neighborhood may slow repairs.
"Generators cause jumpy crews," Whale said.
That's because if one is incorrectly connected directly to a house's electric system or fed into an outlet, deadly electricity could be coursing through lines workers expect to be harmless.
"When they hear a lot of generators, they'll be testing everything," Whale said.
Facing legislative huffing and puffing, power companies this year accelerated pole inspection and tree trimming rotations and are studying ways to armor the electric system.
This month, FP&L began installing poles that can withstand 150 mph winds that support feeder lines to critical areas such as Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale and the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.
Kustin is not sure she will test whether TECO can get the lights back on faster if a storm hits this year, but she does at least have a battery-powered television.
"I don't know if I'll stay after the storm," she said. "I'll have to see, maybe go to a hotel someplace."
