On Wednesday, more than 160,000 households and businesses in the states of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, and California remained without power as a result of the damage caused by Hurricane “Helene”. Meanwhile, Hurricane “Milton” is approaching Florida and is expected to make landfall along the Gulf of Mexico coast on Wednesday night.
According to Reuters, data from “PowerOutage.US”, a project tracking power outages across the United States, shows that the utility company Duke Energy has the highest number of outages. Duke Energy is a major electricity supplier in South Carolina and North Carolina, with approximately 63,108 households still without power in North Carolina.
Hurricane “Milton” has rapidly intensified in the Atlantic Ocean, becoming the third fastest storm on record to strengthen from a Category 1 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours. This could potentially be one of the most destructive storms the affected areas have ever faced. These regions are still in the process of recovering from the damage caused by Hurricane “Helene” less than two weeks ago.
Jason Hollifield, storm director for Duke Energy in South and North Carolina, stated, “Unfortunately, the damage caused by ‘Helene’ is unlike anything we’ve experienced in Western North Carolina before.” He added, “While Duke Energy’s crews have made significant progress overall, there is extremely challenging and targeted work to be done before the company can restore power to more users in the hardest-hit communities.”
Meanwhile, Hurricane “Milton” is following a rare west-to-east path across the Gulf of Mexico and is likely to bring deadly storm surges of 10 feet (3 meters) or higher to most areas along the Gulf coast of Florida.
Here is a breakdown of the major power outage statistics by state:
North Carolina: 81,396 households
Georgia: 42,871 households
Texas: 20,840 households
California: 9,076 households
South Carolina: 8,956 households
Total: 163,139 households
Please stay tuned for further updates on the impact and recovery efforts in the affected regions.