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| METRO | PSOWERLESS
Why wasn’t FPL ready for Hurricane Irma? BY JERRY IANNELLI
ince Hurricane Irma struck, millions of Floridians have been stuck without power
in the sweltering summer heat. Those outages killed eight elderly people trapped in a Hollywood nursing home without air condi- tioning, due to circumstances that FPL was warned about at least two days before the tragedy.
Many powerless South Florida resi- dents are now asking hard questions of the area’s power monopoly, which has spent millions of dollars fighting policies that would have strengthened the grid in the event of a major storm like Irma and, more broadly, stemmed the carbon-fueled climate change likely fueling monster storms.
“I am one of the many that has now been without power for more than two days as a result of Hurricane Irma,” Elise McKenna, a West Palm Beach resident, told New Times via email. “My confusion came when so many of us lost power during the early hours of the storm that basically avoided us. We’ve been told time and time again that rate increases were to help prepare us for future storms.”
McKenna is far from alone. FPL’s workers on the ground seem to be doing all they can to fix downed lines and restore power to homes, and they deserve huge credit for working around the clock in awful conditions. But the company’s corporate and government- relations wings have serious questions to answer after quashing regulations that could have made the energy grid stronger at a slight expense to FPL’s billion-dollar bottom line.
Hurricane Wilma, the last ’cane to hit South Florida before Irma, tore through the area in 2005 and killed power to 3.24 million of FPL’s then-4.3 million customers, about 75 percent of the entire grid. Many of those cus- tomers had to wait up to two weeks for power to return. Since then, the company has spent more than $2 billion supposedly girding itself against the next storm, according to a Sun Sentinel piece published before Irma hit.
But after Irma — which by most reports brought only Category 1-strength winds to South Florida — the company did even worse than after Wilma by some measures. Despite all of those upgrades, an even larger percentage of FPL’s customer base — 4.4 of 4.9 million customers, almost 90 percent — lost electricity the weekend Irma hit.
Granted, Wilma and Irma were different storms: Irma was larger and raked South Florida with its powerful dirty side. Dur- ing Wilma, many Miamians were trapped without power for two weeks or more, and FPL promised it would fix most of Florida’s east coast within a week. But the company
| LUKE’S GOSPEL | Left to Die
Hurricane Irma recovery fails Miami’s blacks.
TBY LUTHER CAMPBELL he Hurricane Irma recovery effort is in full swing, but once again Mi- ami’s hardest-hit African-American communities have to fend for themselves.
In tourist destinations like Miami Beach, TV news reports blast video of crews clearing debris and FPL contractors restoring power. Meanwhile, residents of Overtown and Liberty City swelter in cramped apartments with no electricity for days and run out of es- sentials. Many can’t afford to take advantage of the discounted rates Miami Beach hotels offer those displaced by the hurricane.
The most underprivileged and poorest neighborhoods deserve first priority before, during, and after a hurricane. But history proves that’s rarely how they’ve been treated.
After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, African- Americans living in hardest-hit areas — representing one-third of Miami-Dade’s population — largely relied on relatives and friends to survive the aftermath, according to a 2015 National Political Science Review book analyzing black politics in America.
It took black politicians like then-county Commissioner Betty Ferguson and civil rights organizations like the NAACP to force FEMA and the Red Cross to steer recovery resources to heavily damaged areas in the county’s African-American communities.
The Review also found blacks were squeezed out of multimillion-dollar hur- ricane repair and debris-removal projects.
Now, 25 years later, after another mas- sive hurricane tore through South Florida, black people are still struggling to find work. A recent WLRN report profiled Lib-
erty City resident Rufus James, who was desperately seeking odd jobs clearing
people’s yards so his grandchildren could have something to eat.
Before every hurricane season, officials send out notices remind- ing residents to prepare. Yet you
don’t see the governor taking steps to protect those who need help most.
If there is a riot, Miami-Dade and the City of Miami always have a response plan in place; they have it down to a science. They should do the same when a hurricane hits.
There should be a program in place that trains residents in low-income areas to work as temporary relief contractors. They should be placed on a list and, before a hurricane hits, get called in to work. There should be a program where pallets of food, toiletries, and other necessities can be deployed to the poorest neighborhoods.
Instead, blacks are left to die.
Follow Luke on Twitter: @unclelukereal1
also said harder-hit customers on the state’s Gulf Coast could be out of power for 12 days or more. The same would likely have been true in Miami had Irma’s eye wall churned through Dade County instead of Naples.
Even worse, some of FPL’s highly touted storm-ready technology didn’t work after Irma.
Before the hurricane hit, FPL directed residents to regularly check its mobile app and online service map to see if their homes had power — but the Tuesday after the storm,
Courtesy of FPL
FPL has angered hordes of Floridians.
“Their official, blanket statement says ‘end of the upcoming weekend.’ How are things this bad after tropical storm winds and spotty Cat 1 gusts? FPL is not doing right by our commu- nity, and no one is doing anything about it.”
FPL President Eric Silagy asked “folks to be patient” with the company after the storm.
But many Floridians wonder if the large number of residents without power and flubbed website are just the lat- est signs that the company has spent way too much on lobby- ing and government affairs and not nearly enough on hurricane-proofing the power grids it maintains in some of the most storm- prone areas of the world.
FPL and its parent com- pany, NextEra Energy, have for years heavily influenced state and local politics through donations, making billions in profits each year ($1.6 billion alone in 2016) thanks to favorable state laws that are sometimes literally written by the power company’s own lobbyists.
FPL’s lobbying wing has fought hard against letting Floridians power their own homes with solar panels. Thanks to power-company rules, it’s impossible across Florida to simply buy a solar panel and power your individual home with it. You are instead legally mandated to con- nect your panels to your electric grid.
More egregious, FPL mandates that if the power goes out, your solar-power system must power down along with the >> p10
RESIDENTS ARE ASKING WHY MOST OF THE POWER GRID WENT DEAD SO QUICKLY INCAT1 CONDITIONS.
FPL was forced to apologize after many residents said they were either unable to access the map
or were repeatedly given inaccurate information. (Two New Times reporters were given wrong info that week — one was told her power was back on, only to
travel home and find she was still in the dark.) “Communication systems across Florida
were impacted by Irma, causing issues with our reporting systems,” FPL’s web- site said that Tuesday. “We apologize if you were provided with incorrect status updates. We ask that you please re-report your outage if your power is still out.”
The fiasco has angered some Florid- ians, who are already fairly ornery af- ter being trapped in homes without air conditioning and hot water for days.
“The website gives no indication as to when individuals can expect power to be restored,” McKenna, the reader in West Palm, says.
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