Gulf Power Company has restored power to more than 35,000 customers as of 9 a.m. this morning. Crews resumed restoration efforts at 6 a.m. after the storms began to subside.
Less than 24,000 customers are still without power, primarily in Escambia County, which was hit hard by nearly 2 feet of rain since Tuesday afternoon.
Crews from Mississippi Power, a Gulf Power sister company, are en route to Northwest Florida to help the company with restoration efforts.
For customers’ safety, Gulf Power offices in Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties will not open until 1 p.m. today.
Crews could do little work overnight because of the flooded road conditions and continued storms that rolled through the area. Widespread damage to the system is still being assessed before an estimated restoration time for all customers can be determined.
Gulf Power’s customers are experiencing fewer power outages than any other time in recent history. In fact, investments in the power grid have made a significant difference, improving reliability for the utility’s 436,000 customers by more than 35 percent since 2010.
“Our line and support personnel have had a lot of experience over the past couple of years restoring power,” said Jeff Rogers, Gulf Power Communications manager. “When you pair that with the improvements we’re making to our power grid — the bottom line is customers get their power back on more quickly.”
Gulf Power’s Online Outage map<http://outagemap.gulfpower.com/external/default.html> enables live tracking of power restoration efforts. You can access this map through the company’s new Outage App on your smartphone. Search for “Gulf Power” in iTunes or on the Google Play store to download the free app. You can also keep updated through Gulf Power’s Facebook page.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Gulf Power restores power to 35,000 customers