In this image taken from video, Florida Power Light employees work inside the company's command center during a hurricane storm drill in West Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, May 9, 2024. The company is preparing for this year's hurricane season by pretending a major storm already hit. – Under blue skies, officials at Florida's largest power company dealt Thursday with the aftermath of a major hurricane that slammed into Miami and Fort Lauderdale — or a pretend one, anyway.
FPL's territory covers almost Florida's entire Atlantic Coast, much of its Gulf Coast south of Tampa and the far western Panhandle, where about 12 million people, or 55% of the population, reside. The National Hurricane Center is predicting the upcoming Atlantic and Gulf season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, will exceed the yearly average of seven tropical storms and seven hurricanes, and that three of the storms will be major. Not all hurricanes make landfall.
FPL officials said making assessments has gotten easier over the past decade. Instead of relying on customers to report outages and then sending crews to drive through the area to pinpoint the damage, sensors now tell FPL immediately where there are blackouts and locate the cause. Drones are used to examine lines. These improvements lessen the time crews spend on each repair, meaning they can get more done in a day.