Lakeland Electric Update 10/12 at 4 p.m.

The restoration of all our mainline circuits is nearly complete, except for the Gibsonia-Galloway circuit, which is still undergoing restoration. Today, we have made significant progress in restoring power in Highland City, and the West Memorial circuit has been successfully restored. We have crews actively working in Combee Settlement today and across our service area. Our Utility Resource Coordinator expressed optimism, stating, "We’re gobbling them up today," when asked about the status of the outages.
 
Outages

• We have 16,800 customers without power from a total of nearly 90,000 following Hurricane Milton.
• As restoration efforts progress, the outages are becoming increasingly challenging and time-consuming. We are transitioning from repairing outages that restore power to thousands of people at a time to outages that restore power to hundreds of people at a time.

Estimated Restoration Times

• We estimate that power will be restored to all customers able to safely receive it on Friday, October 18. Customers currently experiencing flooding may expect their power to be restored toward the end of our estimated timeframe.
• We anticipate areas that are not flooded in Combee Settlement, Polk City, Orangedale and Highland City having power restored on Tuesday, October 15. 

Personnel

• There are 600 personnel in the field restoring power, five times our normal operation. 
  • This includes more than 500 mutual aid personnel from Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Alabama, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida.

Customer Service

• Customers should call (863)834-9535 to report electric emergencies and downed lines.
• Customer Service Call Center will be open until midnight tonight. 
  • We are only taking storm-related calls. 
  • Disconnects for non-payment are suspended for all customers. 
• Customers can monitor their outage by visiting our Outage Map. https://lakelandelectric.com/outagemap​