"Utilities in U.S. Southeast Restore Power To Nearly Half Hit By Irma"

"Utilities in the U.S. Southeast returned power to almost half of the homes and businesses knocked out by Hurricane Irma, leaving about 4.3 million customers in the dark as of midday Wednesday, in one of the biggest restoration efforts in U.S. history.

The total number of customers still out, representing about 9 million people in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, dipped from a peak of more than 7.8 million customers, or over 16 million people, on Monday.

Major utilities in Florida - including NextEra Energy Inc’s Florida Power & Light (FPL), Duke Energy Corp and Emera Inc’s Tampa Electric - have mobilized tens of thousands of workers to deal with the outages after Irma landed early Sunday and carved a destructive path up Florida, which has a population of about 20.6 million."

Scott DiSavino reports for Reuters September 13, 2017.