Crews slowly light up Central Florida

About two-thirds of Central Florida electric customers thrown into the dark by Hurricane Charley were back on line Tuesday as utility officials announced they had completed key repairs to a majority of their main power lines.

That milestone cleared the away for restoration of power to more than 294,000 homes and businesses that remain without electricity throughout the Orlando area. Despite heavy damage to wiring in many neighborhoods, utility officials pledged to power up many of those customers in the next few days.

By Tuesday nearly 117,000 more customers of the four major utilities serving the area were receiving power, including Tom and Ruth Williams in Longwood, who planned to serve home-brewed coffee at breakfast today for the first time in five days.

The early-morning runs to Burger King are over, Tom Williams said.

“We can look at ourselves as the fortunate ones,” he said as he finished turning on his air-conditioning and closing all his windows just after Progress Energy Florida switched on power to his home Tuesday afternoon.

Progress Energy spokesman C.J. Drake said conditions are improving, but with nearly 160,000 homes and businesses still dark within the company’s Central Florida service area, Progress “still has a lot of work to do, and in some cases the hardest work is ahead of us.”

He predicted that many people will see results soon.

“Those folks who have been saying, ‘I haven’t seen a truck in my neighborhood. Where is everybody?’ They’re now going to start seeing trucks in their neighborhoods,” Drake said. “We’re down to the house-to-house, street-to-street restoration.”

The number of people affected by the storm is greater than the number of customers, which reflects the homes and businesses but not the people inside. Most customers are residences, which typically represent about 2.5 people each.

That means that roughly 535,000 people still were without power Tuesday in Orange, Seminole, Volusia, Osceola, Brevard and Polk counties.

Orange County Chairman Rich Crotty called the pace of power restoration “a step in the right direction.”

“Power is the pressure-point issue,” Crotty said. “No power leads to overcrowded hospitals because elderly citizens can’t breathe. No power leads to fender-benders at traffic intersections without lights. No power leads to backed-up lift stations and sewage overflows.”

Ken Ksionek, interim director of the Orlando Utilities Commission, again pleaded with residents to try to keep their frustrations at bay.

“We ask customers to be patient,” Ksionek said. “We continue to work hard at the task we were charged with.”

OUC restored power to about 5,000 customers since Monday, bringing the total without power in the cities of Orlando and St. Cloud to about 35,000, said spokesman Sheridan Becht.

Florida Power & Light spokesman Bob Coleman said repairs to the main feeder lines that were expected to be complete by late Tuesday will enable the company to concentrate on specific homes that suffered more severely from the storm.

“Then it’s a matter of going down the side streets so to speak,” Coleman said. “There may be customers with damage to their home that can’t take service.”

FP&L has 79,000 customers in Seminole, Volusia and Brevard that remain without service. That number was down from 100,000 on Monday.

In Osceola County, Kissimmee Utility Authority restored power to 4,000 customers, leaving the total without electricity at about 22,500.

Frustrations continued to mount for some residents.

Thousands of Progress Energy customers in the hardest-hit areas -- including an estimated 28,000 in Conway, Edgewood and Belle Isle communities of Orange County -- aren’t likely to have power until midnight Saturday. The same goes for the cities of Maitland and Winter Park, said Progress CEO Bill Habermeyer.

“There are areas that don’t look bad, but some [areas] are as bad as Hurricane Andrew,” he said, recalling the storm that devastated parts of South Florida in 1992.

Other parts of Orange County were expected to come back on earlier. The utility hoped to have Winter Garden on by this morning, Lake Buena Vista by tonight and Apopka and Ocoee by Thursday night.

In Seminole, most of the unincorporated area served by Progress is expected to be lit by midnight Thursday, with remaining areas by midnight Friday. Casselberry should follow by midnight Saturday, the company said.

About 6,000 utility workers and subcontractors from 17 states -- 2,500 of those from Progress Energy -- were working around the clock in the Orlando area, Habermeyer said.

The only Central Florida county with no storm-related blackouts is Lake. Progress Energy spokesman Keith Poston said 15,614 customers there lost power Friday but all were restored by 10 p.m. Monday.

A story in Tuesday’s Orlando Sentinel said the company had admitted to miscounting the number of Lake customers who lost power. Poston said Tuesday that the company made no error or admission, and that the story was inaccurate.

The return of electricity isn’t always reason to celebrate. Tuesday night in Volusia County, a home near Orange City was destroyed when a fire broke out shortly after the power came back on. County Fire Services spokesman Walter Nettles said he was certain it was caused by an electrical problem.

A similar fire during the weekend damaged a home in the Ormond Beach area right after it had power restored, he said.

Nettles said residents who don’t have power should turn off all of their electrical breakers. Once power is restored, they should turn the breakers on one by one, checking for smoke after each one, he said. Andrea Perera, Debbie Salamone, Alicia Caldwell, Sandy Mathers and Melissa Harris of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Beth Kassab can be reached at bkassab@orlandosentinel.com or at 407-420-5448.