Utility trucks from at least eight states are helping to restore power in Alachua County
Staff report
ALACHUA COUNTY, Fla. – As of 4:15 p.m. on Sunday, 16,042 customers in Alachua County do not have power, down from 86,761 after Hurricane Helene passed through. Power outage data comes from FindEnergy and does not include municipal utilities like City of Alachua and City of Newberry that do not provide outage maps.
Current outages by utility:
- Clay Electric Coop – 9,282
- GRU – 3,813
- Duke Energy – 2,317
- Central Florida Electric Coop – 627
- Florida Power & Light – 3
High Springs reports that dozens of utility trucks from Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia are in the area, working on restoring power.
GRU CEO Ed Bielarski reports that crews are working overlapping 16-hour shifts, and crews from Leesburg, Starke, Orlando, and Kissimmee in Florida, along with Lubbock, Texas, and Lafayette, Louisiana, are providing mutual aid. Bielarski said the utility had 57 broken poles, 19 blown transformers, 406 downed wires, and 97 trees down on wires.
Can you imagine if Curry was running the show instead of Bielarski? We’d have to spend a few days making sure everything was all equitable, inclusive, and diversified before anybody could start work. Then half of them would probably quit after getting a taste of her sour attitude.
That’s BS. GRU has been offering great service since taking over my area and that includes now. Outages are rarer and more quickly resolved – including now – than with our previous supplier.
GRU will still continue to expect payment on time although I had to discard a freezer & refrigerator full of food‼️. Who will feed me until my next retirement check⁉️
Go to Steinhatchee. They are handing out food and free gas
This is Florida, we have summer storms and hurricanes and those with half a brain have generators.
Was it part of Ed’s genius plan to only have 15 mutual aid personnel available to work on the first day after the storm cleared?
In past storms, many more crew were ready to go as soon as the storm cleared. Why the change? Complacency?
And while we’re at it, why did 2 different transmission lines fail? Sounds like a major maintenance issue since the winds did not likely exceed design criteria for these robust facilities. This is not normal and the board and public deserve a clearer understanding. of this since there have been other failures during relatively minor storms.
Maybe nobody wanted to come to a failed blue city to work. Gainesville has a lot worse reputation nowadays and is often the butt of jokes. With the “progressive” mentally retarded mutant humanoids on the city commission for the last decade, it’s a wonder any showed up.
You still here? Why?
4 days later and still no power and no update from GRU… they conveniently disabled the ability to for customers to speak with anyone for an update. What other company do you know of that can refuse to speak with customers while not fixing issues and expect to stay in business…. Monopolism at its finest
Clay does the same thing. You just get a recording so apparently when there are large outages all the utility companies hide behind recordings rather than listening to their customers.
GRU has an online map with outages and at each area, when they expect to restore power. For the 1st day or so of the hurricane aftermath, they weren’t doing the prediction part BECAUSE THERE HAD JUST BEEN A HURRICANE!!!!
Gee, I wonder why they didn’t answer the phone with thousands of outages from a hurricane?
GRU records it if you call it i correctly and maps it. Cut the conspiracy crap, for once. THERE WAS A HURRICANE WITH THOUSANDS OF OUTAGES!!
Be weary of their outage map, they falsely show that our power has been restored and it hasn’t.
Gee, a mistake must be subterfuge and dirty dealing. Did they know you’re a Republican or FSU fan? My outage was correctly noted and fixed sooner than they predicted and sooner than our previous utility company had.
Has to be asked… How many GRU customers would have power right now if the money wasted on biomass had instead gone to burying power lines and other storm-proofing infrastructure upgrades?
No, that stupid BS did not have to be asked. GRU is much faster than the previous company that served my neighborhood.
While losing power is a huge inconvenience, we got off very easily compared to other areas. We have been lucky that GRU got some extra utility help–I expected that most of the out of state utility workers would be in other areas, such as Valdosta or Asheville.
Lineman and tree services are incredible people, they work for hours in Floridas heat. Thank you to you all.
I appreciate how quickly GRU was able to restore power. I recommend everyone write down the phone number for reporting outages along with your account number and keep it in your emergency kit.
Typical negative responses from the snowflake regular commentators here. Hey, WTH don’t you pack up and leave for the nirvana you imagine exists? Utility companies have all been overloaded with damage, including GRU, and their response time in my neighborhood, compared with the previous supplier, has been excellent.
You live in Florida! There are hurricanes here! If you can’t handle it, leave. NOW!
Well I see my utility company leads the pack in people still out of power. Good old Clay, we’ve been out 5 days now. If you live rural Clay is your only choice and I will say that Clay has power lines in treed areas so naturally there are more trees falling on Clay lines. That said, after 5 days without power I’m rather sick of it.
In 2004 we went almost 2 weeks without power. Stuff happens!