We still have facilities functioning on generators throughout the Treasure Coast area. For example, in Fort Pierce, we have a hub that has been on generator and when our crews went back yesterday to refuel the generator, the entire road into the hub was washed away and now underwater. As a result our crew was not going to be able to access the hub facility by truck. Rather than give up the hub and have it go down due to the generator being out of fuel, our employees literally waded into the water to carry the fuel cans into the hub by hand so that the generator could get refueled and customers would not be impacted.
We continue to coordinate closely with the power company as we have downed poles where a power line is wrapped around our lines. We have to ensure that it is safe before any crews can begin working on these lines because of the high voltages in the power lines. Also, over the next few days, we will be bringing in an additional 1,000 personnel to work with network maintenance teams and our technicians to continue the restoration work in Florida.
Our network maintenance teams are out in the field working to restore downed lines or cut lines throughout these areas. We have seen our fiber lines that have been cut from downed trees so our teams have been working as quickly as possible to restore those lines. For example, we repaired a fiber cut in Stuart that was caused by a fire on the power line that sits on the same pole as our line. The good news is that our network maintenance teams are out in the field and able to identify these kind of issues and work on them as quickly as possible.
Additionally we are deploying aerial drones to provide us with HD imagery to help locate any downed lines or other network impediments in areas where it may be difficult to reach because of blocked roads, debris or other storm related impacts.
We have been doing our best to refuel generators so that our facilities are able to stay up and functioning without commercial power. The situation is very challenging and we know being without Xfinity internet, TV or phone service is frustrating for our customers. Please know that we are doing everything possible to be able to restore services as quickly as we can.
Please visit xfinity.com/florida to find more information or alert us to ongoing service issues – downed lines, continued service interruptions – after power is restored.
