(Reuters) – More than 350,000 homes and businesses were without power in Florida on Thursday as Hurricane Helen approached landfall in the state’s Big Bend region, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
Hurricane Helen headed toward Florida’s Panhandle, bringing a potentially deadly storm surge to much of the coast.
The US National Hurricane Center said on Thursday that Helen had strengthened into a very dangerous Category 4 hurricane and was approaching the northeastern Gulf coast. It was expected to make landfall this evening.
The utility company with the largest number of affected customers was Florida Power & Light, which had 137,897 customers without power.
This was followed Duke Energy (NYSE:), with 133,948 customers out of service in the state.
“We expect landfall to cause the greatest damage to our infrastructure in the Panhandle and Big Bend region, which will likely cause prolonged power outages,” Todd Fountain, storm manager at Duke Energy, said in a statement.
Here are the major outages by utility in Florida:
Electricity company outages
Florida Power and Light Company 137897
Tampa Electric 58430
Lee County Electric Cooperative 8,074
Duke Energy 133,948
Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative 12,140
Total 366,035