FPL: More than 95 percent have power in Southwest Florida

Sept. 19--As state officials estimate nearly $2 billion in insured losses filed so far from Hurricane Irma, power has now been restored to more than 95 percent of the homes and businesses in Southwest Florida.

Insurers have received 335,347 claims as of Sunday from the widespread damage caused by Irma, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation said Monday.

Most of those claims, over 294,000, come from owners of houses, mobile homes and other residential dwellings, OIR said.

The state estimates between 2,501 and 5,000 claims each from Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties, with more specific numbers unavailable.

As of Sunday, one week after Irma smashed the state, unaudited data from Florida insurers pegged total estimated insured losses at $1.95 billion.

But that total is likely to spike as more property owners file claims in the days and weeks ahead.

Fitch Ratings said estimated losses for the insurance industry range from $25 billion to $50 billion from Irma. Those losses will hurt insurance companies in the near term, Fitch said, but they should not weaken their capital positions, barring further catastrophic losses.

"Re-insurers will bear a large portion of losses from Irma, but the reinsurance market is well equipped to handle substantial hurricane loses, due in part to a lack of major hurricane landfalls in the 11 years before Irma," said Fitch director Chris Grimes.

Meanwhile, Florida Power & Light Co. as of 5 p.m. reported that 4 percent of its customers were still without power in the three-county region.

A total of 23,340 homes and businesses remained in the dark, the utility reported.

It has returned power to 442,310 customers who were knocked out by Irma last week.

But the Circle of Friends Preschool in Sarasota, which serves 53 children, was not one of them as of Monday afternoon. School director Claudia Drimmer said the outage is causing a hardship for her clients, and updates from FPL aren't available.

"Our preschool serves families in our community, and they depend on us opening our doors," she said. "Parents can't go back to work and children are affected by the aftermath of the storm too and need to have their routine and normal schedule back.

"Some parents are single moms who need to go to work and have no family here to help them. We actually have teachers baby sit at the parents' homes now so the parents can go to work," Drimmer said.

By county, 12,610 customers in Sarasota, 6,080 in Manatee and 4,650 in Charlotte remained powerless, out of FPL's customer base of 562,800 here.

The company on Saturday said power would be restored to 90 percent of local customers by Monday, to 95 percent by Tuesday and to all customers by Wednesday, except in areas hardest hit by flooding or tree damage.

That was two days early than the company's initial forecast of complete power restoration by Friday.

Statewide, FPL has brought back power to 4.2 million customers, but 216,470 were still without electricity as of Sunday evening.

FPL says customers who are still without power can come to Robarts Arena, 3000 Ringling Blvd., to speak to company representatives, or call 800-468-8243.

On the insurance front, OIR said insurers have already paid 9,420 claims and closed (not paid) 5,552 claims.

Irma also continues to interrupt cellphone service here, although it is improving as well.

According to the latest data from the Federal Communications Commission, in Sarasota County 7 percent of cell sites are still out of service, down from 12.7 percent last week. Just 3.3 percent are not working in Charlotte, compared with nearly 15 percent last week, while just 0.8 percent are down in Manatee, from 4.2 percent.

Comcast says it has restored service to about 75 percent of its customers in the three-county area.

"Overall, in Southwest Florida we've restored another 26,000 customers in the past 24 hours," said spokeswoman Mindy Kramer. "We also continue to restore pocket outages in these areas. This means that customers may have power restored, but Xfinity services may still not be working."

The company said it will replace at no charge any impaired or lost Xfinity equipment. It will not charge for an in-house appointment during recovery efforts, and it has suspended late payment fees and collections activities.

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