Treasure Coast - Thursday September 29, 2022: Power Outages, trees down, some flooding, and property damage, but no fatalities reported overnight from the storm.
The Treasure Coast appears to have dodged the worst of Hurricane Ian which swept across our area overnight as a Tropical Storm.
In St. Lucie County about 12% of FPUA customers in St. Lucie County lost power over night, But restoration efforts were well underway Thursday morning said FPUA’s Director of Utilities Javier Cisneros. “Projected restoration time is, I’m hoping that we have everything restored by the end of the day, if not sooner.”
“There was flooding in swales and yards and roads," said St. Lucie County Communications Director Eric Gill, "but we haven’t had a lot of reports of damage to homes.”
In Martin County Emergency Management Director Sally Waite said “We’ve had about 14-thousand people without power," and "we do have a couple of trees down." But there were no reported injuries overnight and no serious structural damage. "We’ve had some minor flooding," said Waite.
“Last night we had approximately 75 people that were sheltering," said Emergency Management Coordinator Ryan Lloyd. The shelters closed Thursday afternoon.
Okeechobee County appears to have suffered the worst. Over 17-thousand people lost power there, some mobile homes suffered damage and flooding also appears to have been a greater problem in Okeechobee County. But their not as bad as many of the west coast Counties said Community Service Director Denise Whitehead.
“Overall we feel quite fortunate, we are definitely not as severely impacted as the west coast was," she said. "They are in our thoughts and prayers.”
