Nearly 300,000 Duke Energy customers in Taylor County are still without power from Hurricane Helene.
The catastrophic storm made landfall late Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane in the Florida Big Bend.
Technicians work to repair satellite tower
Helene knocked out the main communications tower at the county’s emergency operations building.
“One of our big pole satellites, antennas went down and now none of us really have reception,” said Andrew Morgan, an acting public information officer for Taylor County.
Morgan says there’s no real estimate on when the county’s power will be fully restored.
As of Friday at 3:30 p.m., 7,357 outages have been reported, impacting 284,853 customers. Utility crews are out, however little progress has been made due to the roads being flooded and littered with debris.
Assessing the damage of Hurricane Helene
Morgan said on Friday that unlike recent storms, Helene brought record-setting storm surges to the county.
He attributes that to the reason Taylor is experiencing massive flooding and structural damage.
“You know the soil was still wet from the other hurricanes,” said Morgan. “Trees were not fully grown, infrastructure wasn’t all there. It wasn’t that long ago. Now, we got to pull our muscles out and do it again. There’s not much you can do at this point.”
Search and rescue teams are out on boats hitting communities along Taylor’s coastline.
Taylor County is working to regain lost power by clearing off fallen debris and downed power lines. So far, Taylor has not had any reports of casualties. Residents have been told to remain in place until the roads are clear.
