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Originally Posted by ryno
They got hit harder down south than we did this time. There wasn't catastrophic structural damage fortunately but power really took a beating. See FPL is our power company and part of the money that we pay is to trim back trees and generally provide upkeep to the lines and poles. But instead of doing that they've been lining their pockets for the past x years and then after the storms they want to charge us more to repair all of the lines.
We were fortunate that we got power back the day of the storm. We got digital cable and internet back last night but still don't have phones.
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You are lucky indeed! Florida Power & Light Co. reported the largest number of outages in the company’s history: 3.1 million — nearly three-quarters of its 4.3 million total customers. The latest power outage numbers from Sun-Sentinel Weblog - October 27, 2005
- COUNTY - OUT - RESTORED - AFFECTED - TOTAL ACCTS - PERCENTAGE OUT
Broward - 695,000 - 167,800 - 862,800 - 882,000 - 79 %
Miami-Dade - 612,300 - 344,200 - 956,500 - 980,000 - 62 %
Palm Beach - 534,400 - 129,100 - 663,500 - 681,000 -78 %
--95% of traffic lights are still out
--System-wide, as of 9 a.m., 2.1 million FPL customers are out... 1.1 million have been restored.
--In Palm Beach County, 535,000 FPL customers are without electricity. 129,000 have had their power restored.
--Key operations are also coming back on line. The Boca Hospital and the V.A. are back up.
--The estimates for when the entire county will be back: For the area north of PGA and East of Florida's Turnpike: 50% back by November 8th , 95% by November 15th.
--Only 26 substations remain out of service at this point. Most will be back within the next day or so.
FPL spokesman Max Macon at the Palm Beach County Emergency Operations Center said some power is coming up in the county but it is very spotty. He said the majority of the damage in the region appears to have been in Broward and southeastern Palm Beach County.
Palm Beach County Commission Chairman Tony Masilotti said “It’s ugly out there. There is a lot of damage out there. Major electric transmission lines are down and utility poles along Okeechobee Boulevard are snapped. The Al Packer Ford dearlership building on Military Trail in West Palm Beach between Southern Boulevard and Okeechobee Boulevard was totally destroyed".
Boca Raton Mayor Steven Abrams said “Tons of trees are uprooted and snapped, power lines are down and streets are blocked. We stood here on the third floor [of the operations center] and watched roofs peeling off and saw broken glass.â€
Delray Mayor Jeff Perlman said "The city suffered extensive damage, including windows blown out in residential and commercial buildings throughout the city. Trees and power lines are toppled on many roads, blocking key intersections such as Atlantic Ave. and State Road A1A."
With regard to structural damages, this sounds much more severe than anything we experienced last hurricane season. Our place is on the ocean in SE PB County between Boca and Delray and I'm still trying to get exact confirmation of damage, but it seems telephone, power and water are still out. Many of the high-rise condos have diesel fueled emergency power generators, but their cooling systems are plumbed to municipal water supply which, of course, is at risk if the pumping station itself loses electricity (doh!?). I presume what was left of our beach after last year is gone now. Thankfully ours is not an old building and has good storm shutters, although Wilma was strong enough to rip hurricane shutters right off many buildings.
To the south, it sounds like Miami-Dade got hit pretty hard too so, unless he's gaot a generator in his back pocket, it's possible Smoke may be offline for a while.
I have smoke's e mail but that is pretty useless at this point. I hope that PW and his family are okay. 
Hope he's okay
