More than 5.7 million Florida residences and businesses are without power after Hurricane Irma’s tore through the state, the office of Gov. Rick Scott, R-Fla., announced Monday morning.
The state said 58 percent of electric customers do not have power. The state has a population of more than 20 million people.
Florida Hurricane #Irma Power Outage Numbers as of 09/11/2017 6:00 AM ET. PDF at: https://t.co/MdtDTxRJZf #FLResponds pic.twitter.com/8hfJ6IzuWh
— Florida SERT (@FLSERT) September 11, 2017
More than 100,000 people have reported electric outages in Georgia.
The total electric outages make it the highest number in U.S. history to ever happen as the result of a hurricane.
Utility officials believe it will take weeks to restore power to the millions affected, according to the Associated Press.
The Category 4 storm descended on the Florida Keys late Saturday into early Sunday then crept up the western coast of the peninsula. It was downgraded to a Category 3 storm by the time it traveled north to Marco Island on its way toward Tampa Bay.
Parts of Florida are still under flash flood alerts, and Jacksonville is expected to see record flooding today as the St. Johns River is expected to rise several feet today.
Irma is now a Category 1 storm that is slowly moving north toward Atlanta, which is under a first-ever tropical storm warning. Irma is slated to hit northern Georgia Tuesday before spinning out in Tennessee.
Twenty-six people died in the Caribbean as a result of the hurricane.
