Most of Hillsborough County joined two-thirds of the state of Florida sweating it out with no power when Hurricane Irma cast her fury on Florida’s West Coast Sept. 10 and 11.
Most homes and businesses are now back on line and out of the darkness, thanks to Tampa Electric’s plan to bring in the cavalry — from Missouri, Oklahoma, Indiana, Massachusetts and even Nova Scotia.
Before the cavalry arrived, however, the community came together for its own, pulling struggling neighbors through the crisis.
For several days, hurricane victims took to their smart phones looking up TECO’s outage map, hoping to see their neighborhoods in Riverview, Apollo Beach, Ruskin and elsewhere given the “all clear.”
“At peak, over the course of the storm, 425,000 TECO customers were affected,” said company spokeswoman Cherie Jacob. “We got gusty conditions for a good bit of time after the storm. About 60 percent of our customers lost power.”
Most were expected to be back in service by last Sunday (Sept. 17) except for the most complex cases.
For several days, residents of Pleasant Living Retirement Community on U.S. 301 between Gibsonton Drive and Symmes Road, really struggled. Their little water-treatment plant was shut down, leaving them with no water for cooking, bathing or flushing. Food was rotting with the heat, and the elderly who live there were in trouble.
“I thought, well, there is got to be a way,” said Barbara Keplinger, who also lives in Pleasant Living. “I know how hard TECO was working and I am grateful. At the same time, I’m thinking these people are going to die when it’s 90 degrees and no oxygen and water and they can’t use their bathrooms.”
She got the word out through Facebook pages called Riverview Word of Mouth and Riverview Community Page. And the other cavalry arrived with hot meals, canned foods, pallets of water and more.
“You want me to tell you how great this community is?” Keplinger said. “It just, like an atom bomb exploded.”
For two days people in the community — and businesses as well — brought breakfast, lunch and dinner. Boy Scouts showed up to cook for the seniors. Cypress Creek Co-op pulled up with a pickup truck full of fresh fruits and vegetables.
And yes, TECO prioritized the little community of 500 and sent crews to restore power, Keplinger said.
“We have a very organized list of priorities to restore power,” Jacob said. “We start with public safety, hospitals, water and sewer plants — those facilities that help the community get back up on its feet and running again.
“When we restore residential, we do quick hits, with one-person trouble teams and if they are small repairs one person can handle, we fix those right away. That would be fuses and breakers,” Jacob said. “If it is a bigger repair that requires a crew, those are prioritized by size and complexity. We try to restore power to the most people in the shortest period of time.”
Keplinger found out Pleasant Living was not listed as a priority for the elderly or the ill. “Now we know how to get on that list.”
“Irma, outages equal to Hurricane Charley, plus Hurricane Jean (both in 2004), plus a little more.” Jacob said. “Irma was larger than both of those put together.”
The community helped fill in the blanks while the power crews worked to restore electricity.
Heather Wright Barr, who lives in Ruskin, rode out the storm in a safe room with her family, listening to trees snap.
“For three whole days, 70 hours, we went without power,” Barr said. “The storm was pretty intense. We didn’t really get scared until Sunday morning when we heard the path was toward Tampa.”
Neighbors helped neighbors with chainsaws, generators and food. They all pooled their energy to collect debris, Barr said.
“How do you even say thank you to your community,” Keplinger said. “Words are not enough.”