Millions see familiar sight: Darkness

Hurricane Frances cut electricity to an estimated 5 million people -- a quarter of them in Central Florida -- as it slogged across the state Sunday.

Although lacking the sustained high winds of Hurricane Charley last month, Frances still plunged more than 3 million households and businesses into darkness as it whirled across the state from Fort Pierce to the Tampa Bay area.

Power companies swung into action, restoring service to parts of Orlando and Kissimmee, for example, but residents in the hardest-hit areas of Florida’s east coast faced days or weeks in the dark while workers rebuild the power grid.

Florida Power & Light, which serves the beach communities where Frances came ashore early Sunday, would not guess when the lights might go back on. Progress Energy, which serves much of Central Florida, also wouldn’t give a timetable.

Together, the two companies had the largest number of customers without service Sunday night -- more than 2.4 million.

In contrast, officials of the Orlando Utilities Commission and the Kissimmee Utility Authority -- two of the four major utilities serving Central Florida -- were confident power would be restored to most customers within a few days.

OUC had 56,000 customers dark by Sunday night, an improvement from earlier in the day, while KUA had 12,268.

That’s a dramatic difference from Aug. 13, when Charley left 208,000 of their customers without power. Some residents waited two weeks for service to be restored. OUC lawyer Tom Tart said the two storms had different personalities.

“What we’re fighting here isn’t Joe Frazier with a knockout punch, but Cassius Clay, just picking away at us. It just keeps jabbing at us,” Tart said.

Charley, which howled in from the Gulf of Mexico on Aug. 13 and traced nearly the length of Interstate 4, toppled power poles and downed thousands of trees and limbs that snapped electrical lines. That led to lengthy reconstruction projects for the utilities.

This time, it is FP&L that must rebuild a shattered power system. OUC and KUA officials said most of their outages seemed to be related to minor problems, such as tripped fuses and transformers.

Although the major utilities said 3 million homes and businesses lost power, the number of people affected is much larger. Most utility customers are households, which typically hold 2.5 people each, pushing the number of those affected to around 5 million.

Other utilities also reported power losses Sunday. In Polk County, Lakeland Electric had 35,000 customers without light, Tampa Electric had 28,000. In Lake County, Sumter Electric Cooperative reported 40,000 customers off line.

Not all Central Florida neighborhoods were promised a quick fix. College Park, the Orlando neighborhood just north of downtown, again had extensive tree damage and likely will need more power work than other communities, OUC officials said.

“They’re going to have to rebuild the system in College Park,” said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who lives there. “Other areas, there may just be tree limbs against lines. I think restoration of power will come much faster overall than it did after Hurricane Charley.”

KUA President and General Manager Jim Welsh was even more confident: “My guess is that we’ll get the bulk of people on tonight [Sunday].”

Utilities were better prepared for Frances than Charley because they had more time to get ready, along with the recent experience of rebuilding after a major hurricane

Charley made an unexpected turn and then shot across the state, while Frances stewed for days in the Atlantic before slowly making it into Florida.

As Frances lumbered ashore -- sending out damaging and sporadic squall lines -- the utilities dispatched line crews to return power to blacked-out neighborhoods whenever the winds and rains slowed Sunday. For long stretches, however, it was too dangerous for crews to venture outdoors.

Most people in the blackout were resigned to sleeping without air conditioning.

“This time I was better prepared. I had ice, candles, water and a radio,” said Juan Barriga, who lives in an apartment house in east Orlando served by OUC. “At least now, I’m in touch with the world.”

But Aida Martin, who lives in south Orange County next to Lake Gatlin in Edgewood, was not so magnanimous.

“It’s a great neighborhood, but Progress Energy . . . It’s outrageous,” Martin said. “Any storm and the power goes . . .; I’m OK with Hurricane Charley and Hurricane Frances, but minor disturbances take them out rather quickly.”

David Johnson was among the first Kissimmee residents to lose his power, with lights going out Saturday afternoon.

“I was like, ‘Oh, man, we’re not going to get it back until after the hurricane,’ ” he said. To his surprise, the power came back four hours later, only to go out again at 9 p.m. He and his wife, Mara, fired up the grill on a patio outside, cracked the windows to catch the breeze and dug in for the night.

“It was a bit nerve-wracking,” he said. “But we didn’t see nothing major, no trees falling over.”

Told KUA said he might have his power back quickly, Johnson replied, “Yeah, right,” with a smirk. He spent a week without power after Charley.

In Edgewater, a Volusia County city south of New Smyrna Beach, rain and wind pummeled homes, knocking out power in some parts of the development Saturday night.

Elizabeth Valentine, an FP&L customer, spent Sunday huddled around a black-and-white, battery-powered television with her family, watching weather reports.

She said her 80-year-old father, who lives in another part of the development, also is without power and is still fighting leaks resulting from Hurricane Charley.

“When the power goes out, you can hear the transformers explode,” Valentine said. “We had two of them today.”

Mark Schlueb, Tania DeLuzuriaga, Henry Pierson Curtis and Rich McKay of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Dan Tracy can be reached at 407-420-5444 or dtracy@orlandosentinel.com. Jim Leusner can be reached at 407-420-5398 or jleusner@orlandosentinel.com.