As of Tuesday morning, there are still more than 130,000 customers in Lee County, Florida, without power, according to the Lee County Electrical Cooperative. That is almost 60% of the people that it serves.
The cooperative’s public relations director, Karen Ryan, told CNN on Tuesday that their county has “never seen anything of this magnitude” before.
“Well, as you could see from the damage, this was a catastrophic event for our community. Irma and many other hurricanes — I’ve never seen anything of this magnitude in our area,” Ryan said.
She added that the electrical cooperative also serves two barrier islands — Sanibel and Pine — that “lost infrastructure to even gain access to the islands.”
“So, none of those customers are able to be restored until there is some sort of way to get access,” Ryan said.
Ryan said Lee County is “looking at different options,” including building barges, to get utility trucks to the islands. But she said that it could take “possibly a month” to restore power to some parts.
“The good thing is — for some people — is that when we were able to assess the damage by air, the day after the storm, we did see that some areas were not as impacted as others,” she added.
Source: www.cnn.com