Alabama Power said it finished its Hurricane Isaias restoration operation Oct. 14 after outages affected more than 400,000 customers, while acknowledging some south Alabama families might still be without power.
Alabama Power put the number of customers who experienced outages at more than 400,000. Separately, PowerOutage.us recorded 325,609 customers without power in Alabama at the event’s peak. That tracker count reflects simultaneous outages at one point; the utility’s figure describes customers who experienced outages during the storm. Alabama Power did not say whether its total counts unique customers or outage events.
The utility said service had returned to roughly 95% of affected customers by the response’s 36-hour point. By the night of Oct. 12, the company described restoration as substantially complete for most customers. Its timeline lists the overall effort as complete on Oct. 14.
Alabama Power identified Escambia and Monroe counties as the areas with the most severe damage. Crews there installed poles, repaired equipment and strung sections of wire again. The company said tropical-storm-force gusts reached about 84% of its service area, while strong winds, fallen trees and flooding damaged its electric system.
More than 7,400 line workers from utilities in 28 states joined Alabama Power’s crews. The company said it used outage forecasts and predictive analysis before the storm to decide where to position crews and equipment. It also credited grid investments with helping the network withstand some of the storm’s impact. The utility said its outage-prevention technology limited long interruptions for more than 69,000 customers and prevented more than 11 million minutes of lost service.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC), part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), classified Isaias as a 90-knot hurricane when it came ashore near Destin, Florida. The NHC logged the landfall at 0130 UTC on Oct. 10.
“Storm restoration at this scale is truly a team effort,” said Scott Moore, Alabama Power’s senior vice president of Power Delivery.
