AccuWeather speaks with Melissa Seixas of Duke Energy Florida where the company is preparing for widespread power outages expected in the state's west coast as powerful Hurricane Milton looms.
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00:00With this being such a rare hurricane path coming into the Tampa area, are your teams
00:05preparing any differently for this storm? Well you're right on target when you talk about the
00:12path of this storm for Duke Energy Florida. If it comes in around the Pinellas County area,
00:17we serve the entire county of Pinellas and all through that I-4 corridor where it's showing
00:23that Milton will track. So we serve through all of those counties that then lead to Orange County,
00:29Osceola, Seminole, Volusia. So this is going to be a multi-county impact for us, a big part of our
00:37service area. You are accurate in stating that we are expecting and our customers should expect
00:43extensive power outages. This is a storm that the state of Florida hasn't seen in decades and so
00:52the extent of it is really unknown, but we are prepared. We have about 16,000 resources
01:00that are mobilizing right now either here already in the state of Florida or on their way. That
01:06includes line personnel, vegetation management, damage assessment, and of course staffing that
01:12we place in emergency operating centers both at the state and the county. We're communicating with
01:17our customers with preparedness messages and also being very transparent about the extent of
01:24outages. We do not have an estimated time of restoration right now and the other part of
01:30our communication or our preparation is also ensuring that our employees are safe. We have
01:36many of our employees are in evacuation zones so we're working with them on their plans to evacuate
01:41and then be able to execute their storm role virtually if they have to until they can either
01:48return to their work location or in some cases even return to the state if they decided to leave
01:54the state of Florida. Unique challenges for everyone who's in the path of Milton. How will
01:58the possible 10 to 15 foot even up to 20 feet of storm surge impact some of the coastal communities
02:04and the challenges with the power grid there? Yeah Milton is not going to spare us on any front
02:11of storm surge much like we just saw less than two weeks ago with Hurricane Helene.
02:17What that did to the barrier islands and the infrastructure there which is a lot of underground
02:21it literally swept very large pieces of equipment off of their pads you know down the roads into
02:28streets and so much of the infrastructure that we rebuilt less than two weeks ago
02:35is very susceptible to the storm surge that we expect to see with Milton and also the wind.
02:43Poles and wires overhead will be susceptible to interference from that's created from the wind so
02:50every aspect of this when Milton will not spare us anything. As president of Duke Energy Florida what
02:58is your message for those who did not evacuate and anything they can do to stay safe in the event
03:03of outages? We have been very very supportive of any and all emergency management evacuation orders.
03:13We are telling our customers really imploring them to hear adhere to and heed the warnings
03:20from those emergency professionals and I think if you look at any interstate in the state of Florida
03:26you can see the number of people that are evacuating so I think just on the heels of
03:31Helene that people are taking evacuations seriously and if they are going to stay in place
03:39because there are parts of the state obviously where they don't need to evacuate but they need
03:44to be prepared for extended days of outages so making sure that they have medication that they
03:50have water that they have food for their pets that they have non-perishable food for themselves
03:57that they have all of their important paperwork if possible and they need to be prepared to be
04:03in in place without power for an extended time.