Utility workers just finished restoring power to barrier islands in Florida by rebuilding infrastructure destroyed in Hurricane Helene. Now they’re preparing to do it all over again, write Shelby Webb and Peter Behr. Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall on Florida’s west coast as soon as tonight, bringing maximum sustained winds of nearly 120 mph and up to 13 feet of storm surge. Tropical storm-force winds, heavy rains and tornado warnings are already spreading across the state. Florida has worked hard over the past 20 years to insulate its power lines, substations, transformers and other electric infrastructure from hurricane damage. The state’s use of self-healing technologies that can reroute electricity away from damaged lines – along with other innovations – has made it a national model for resilience and repairs. Still, officials say Milton’s impact on the grid could be catastrophic — underscoring the cost of more frequent and intense climate-fueled disasters. “The challenge we run into is there’s really no way to completely isolate electricity infrastructure from interaction with the environment,” Ted Kury, director of energy studies for the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida, told Shelby and Pete. “Aboveground lines are more susceptible to wind events — flying debris and falling trees — and underground infrastructure runs the risk of water incursion,” he said. Preparation: A force of 36,000 utility line workers from around the country and Canada began traveling to Florida on Tuesday. Many of those crews are pivoting from grid restoration in the Carolinas and Georgia, where more than 120,000 customers remain without power from Helene, which killed at least 230 people. Tampa Electric, which provides power to roughly 840,000 homes and businesses around Tampa Bay, has also mobilized more than 4,500 utility workers from as far as Texas and Minnesota to help with restoration efforts after Milton, a spokesperson said. Electric utility providers up and down Florida’s west coast told customers they are likely to be without power for days (which may well be an understatement). The National Weather Service’s hurricane statement for a swath of coast including Tampa Bay warned that certain locations “may be uninhabitable for weeks or months.” Tampa Electric said people reliant on electricity for health needs should secure backup power generation. Uncertainty remains about where exactly Milton will strike land, and forecasters said dangerous wind, rain, surge and flooding could range far from the storm’s center. Hurricane and storm surge warnings blanketed most of Florida’s west coast and much of its Atlantic shoreline. And utilities much further inland were bracing for impact. “While it is difficult to predict the full extent, multi-day outages are anticipated, and flooding is a concern,” the Orlando Utilities Commission said Tuesday in a news release. The electricity and water provider said it was “increasing restoration resources to five times the normal size to respond to outages caused by the storm.”
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