Power crews line up to start restoring power to LCEC customers on Sanibel and Captiva in the days after Ian ravaged the islands. COURTESY OF LCEC

Southwest Florida was literally left powerless in the wake of Hurricane Ian.

A restoration army helped get LCEC customers back online, some in a matter of days, most in a matter of weeks, others still in the process of repair to receive power.

“It was a team effort across the state. I have never seen anything like it. There was a common goal and way to help each other out to bring a community back together to restore service,” said Allan Ruth, LCEC director of Business Continuity and Ian Incident commander.

He said each storm is different, with Hurricane Ian being big, slow and producing a great amount of storm surge.

About 25 percent of their employees were directly impacted by the storm.

“They didn’t miss a beat. They came in and worked. Many of these people worked 16 hours a day without a day off for some months. They had heart and soul in it. To see the effort and pride go into it is pretty remarkable,” he said, adding that employees impacted by significant damages were in the hundreds. “To see our employees’ dedication to our members in the community is really remarkable. There is a very good sense of pride across the organization.”

Another proud accomplishment is that they did not suffer a single loss-time accident through the entire restoration effort among either LCEC employees or those who answered the call for aid.

“Unfortunately, in these events where you bring in those many resources there are some injured, seriously injured and sometimes fatalities. That is an indication of how far we have come and it speaks volumes of the industry of how much it takes safety into consideration and training and efforts,” Ruth said. “I hope it is a precedent to be sustained forever more into the future.”

Most of the injuries are caused by, of all things, vegetation. Bent trees are under a lot of stress, he said, adding when a chain saw is used to cut it, it tends to spring and can cause lots of injuries.

“The contractors that came in and everybody that contributed, the restoration team ensured everyone that came went home in the same condition,” Ruth said.

Preparing for Hurricane Ian

LCEC uses an emergency restoration plan that was put into place in 2005 after Hurricane Charley. Since then, official document lessons learned and best practices continue to be incorporated.

The plan was executed 2017 when Hurricane Irma hit Southwest Florida Ruth said, adding it worked well.

“We took the lessons learned from Irma and added some improvements to the plan,” he said.

When Hurricane Ian came on the radar, LCEC began preparing a week out with the Emergency Restoration Committee and started tracking the storm.

“We have a lot of faith in the National Hurricane Center’s ability to be able to predict the storms. It’s amazing how accurate they are when they talk about where the storm is going to hit and the intensity of the storm,” Ruth said.

Ian was his fifth major storm. He started with Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Two days before Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida it was predicted to be a Category 2 storm to hit the Tampa Bay area.

“The storms that come off the western tip of Cuba tend to hook in,” he said, adding that there was concern about the direction. “We planned for Category 4.”

From there they deciphered how many resources they would need to manage this type of event.

“We had about 300 personnel that we brought in from out of town and staged prior to the storm. That was 50 percent of the amount that we had at the peak of Hurricane Irma. We were really well prepared with the resources we brought in. We felt good about the direction we were going,” Ruth said.

Then Hurricane Ian took a right hand turn and became a huge, slow storm.

“One thing that caught everyone by surprise was the storm surge and impacts of what that was,” Ruth said. “Ian, it was 24 hours that it sat on top of us. The damage was pretty extreme on Sanibel Island. Pine Island. They had the winds close to Category 5.”

Hard hit LECE service areas

For LCEC, the most extreme damage was to Matlacha, St. James City, west Cape Coral, south Cape Coral and Sanibel Island.

The Burnt Store corridor and the Surfside area was heavily impacted. Every pole was on the ground on Surfside.

St. James City was devastated.

“St. James City had about 6 to 7 feet of water come across it. Our substation sits on the east side of Stringfellow Road,” he said, about 2-1/2 miles. (The substation had) 2-1/2 to 3 feet of water.”

The battery house, which is housed in a secure area, had a lot of salt spray and rain, resulting in equipment having to be replaced before the substation was reenergized.

“From the center south were the most challenging areas. We had Pine Island essentially restored Oct. 16,” Ruth said, with 95 percent back on power 18 days after the storm.

For Sanibel, Captiva and Upper Captiva, power was brought back on line in various stages during restoration, which were communicated with the public. Ruth said they were working six zones.

“We actually had everybody essentially restored on Sanibel on Oct. 28. It was 29 days after the storm hit,” he said.

Of 9,000 customers on Sanibel Island, approximately 2,000 customers, at the beginning of August, were still unable to take service because they had damage on their end and needed to rebuild their electrical. There were about 4,500 at the end of 2022, that had not taken service because they had so much damage.

“They have made progress. Our hearts go out to the residents of Sanibel,” Ruth said.

LCEC Public Relations Director Karen Ryan said while most people are past the restoration stage, LCEC is still, in some respects, in restoration mode.

“We are still going back and making sure we can reconnect those people when they are ready,” she said.

In some places, LCEC saw 14 feet of water on Sanibel, which impacted the LCEC substation with 9 feet of water, and Pine Island’s substation with 3 feet of water.  

“We recognized early on that the plan we had in place, we were going to have to be pretty agile and bring in additional resources,” Ruth said.

Deployment of resources

The maximum number hit 2,300 resources, with the total number of people needing to be managed around 3,000. LCEC brought in and used contractors that are typically out of the norm. For instance, they ran out of qualified truck drivers who had a CDL to operate a semi.

“In a few days we had hundreds of people coming in,” Ruth said with 100 here and 100 there rapidly building up.

This was made possible through the Florida Electric Cooperatives Association, as LCEC made contact with them the second day. Resources came from eight states and 53 cooperatives.

“Gov. DeSantis and his staff, they were remarkable with things that opened up to us that we never had available before,” Ruth said.

Duke Energy began with 300 personnel and quickly doubled, deploying in west Cape Coral, Burnt Store area. There were also employees on Pine Island working with leadership as they were staged on the island.

In addition, the Florida Department of Transportation and the Governor’s Office were essential in the restoration efforts. Ruth said with assistance, they were able to shuffle 10 to 15 trucks at a time out to Sanibel. They had 300 trucks on Sanibel with a couple hundred personnel.

“We had a one-time trip,” to move all the equipment and materials needed., Ruth said. “We only had to shuffle personnel, which made the efforts much easier.”

Infrastructure and costs

LCEC replaced 3,042 poles following Hurricane Ian, which is about 1.8 percent of the total population of poles. In addition, they replaced about 1,940 transformers, about 30,000 insulators were changed and 60,000 splicers replaced.

“During Hurricane Irma we changed 1,000 poles and 750 transformers,” Ruth said. “Everything was three times the impact of what we had changed out from the previous storm.”

Although the final numbers are still to be tallied, he said they are somewhere north of $180 million of the direct costs from Hurricane Ian. Those costs are FEMA reimbursable and they are currently submitting the claims.

“The state of Florida has done a remarkable job to streamline those processes and help get those reimbursements,” Ruth said.

LCEC also has long-term plans to replace the underground infrastructure along Sanibel and Pine Island as a result of storm surge.

“It is corroding and has to be replaced. There are a lot of work activities that are still going to have to take place over the next few years to make sure it is replaced before it fails,” Ruth said.  

Lessons learned

In the past, LCEC has always housed personnel who came to help after the storm in hotels.

Unfortunately with Hurricane Ian, the hotels they usually used were rapidly lost as a result of damage. With competition from other agencies also looking for hotels, it was hard to find places to house those providing assistance.

Ruth said they used the base camp philosophy, as FPL secured one and turned it over to LCEC. Another base camp was set up on Sanibel Island.

“We have completely transitioned to a base camp concept. It houses them, feeds them and laundries them. We have to have a piece of property big enough to set things up,” he said, as the camps can house anywhere from 500 to 1,000 personnel.

Base camps consist of big trailers that are comprised of pods with sleeping quarters, showers and an area to cook meals.

“There are 500 to 1,000 people all staying in these trailers in one location,” Ryan said, adding that they all eat breakfast together before going out for the day, and then return to have dinner, shower and sleep.