JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As Tropical Storm Nicole makes its way through Northeast Florida Thursday, some residents are experiencing much-anticipated power outages due to strong winds and heavy rains impacting the area.
According to the JEA outage map, outages were sporadic across Jacksonville. As of 12:45 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, JEA said it had 68 active electric outages affecting more than 2,600 customers. The utility had drastically cut power outages over the late morning. More than 25,000 customers were without electricity in the morning and JEA was quick in getting many of those issues addressed.
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“With the wind and the widespread nature of this storm, we’re going to see outages fluctuate during the day,” JEA CEO Jay Stowe said.
JEA said last Friday, crews were prepared for Nicole’s impact as early as Wednesday.
As outages increase, it could potentially take crews longer to get the power restored depending on the demand and weather conditions, but the safety of the crew is always a top priority.
“A couple of things are going to happen: one is that as more outages occur, it might take a little bit longer to get to them. And as the wind picks up during the day, we will have to pull crews off the grid. It’s not safe for them to be out there,” Stowe said.
“We should know that your power is out because of the way the system works.”
Along with electrical impacts, flooding along the St. Johns River and inland is also a concern that JEA has prepared to address.
Stowe said crews are in “good shape” and that they are keeping an eye on flooding in the area.
“We’re in good shape. We’ve gotten generators and have been able to keep our systems operating well. The floods, we’re going to keep an eye on that as we move through the day,” Stowe said. “We’ve got really good crews, experts at what we’re going both on the electric and the water side to keep things running the best we can.”
Although crews will know when you’ve lost power through their system, you can report an outage, visit jea.com. The outage map also provides residents with updates on progress.