Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina at 7:15 a.m. Friday, September 14 and by 8:30 a.m. 455,775 power outages had been reported in the state.

The highest concentrations of outages were occurring in Beaufort, Brunswick, Carteret, Craven, Duplin, New Hanover, Onslow, Pender and Wake counties.

Power outages started to occur as early as 2 p.m., Thursday, September 13. Electric utilities and cooperatives had reported as many as 12,000 outages statewide early Thursday afternoon mostly along the coast.

Duke Energy, the largest of the utilities in the Carolinas, predicted on Thursday that power outages caused by Florence could affect from 1 million to 3 million customers. The company said that it had dispatched more than 20,000 workers from the Carolinas and other states to restore power.

The company has moved power restoration crews from its facilities in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Florida prior to the storm. Line technicians and workers were checking equipment, supplies and inventories on Thursday to ensure adequate materials were on hand to make repairs and restore power.

Duke is working with the Southeastern Electric Exchange to gather additional crews from other energy companies to assist.

A spokesman from Duke Energy noted that restoring power is an enormous job for repair crews because high winds and flooding makes travel and work conditions difficult. The company added that before power can be restored, crews must first evaluate the scope of the damage and that could take 24 hours or more. The evaluation is necessary to determine which crews; equipment and supplies are needed before repairs can take place.

Residents can access duke-energy.com, use cell phones to send tests to 57801, or call Duke’s automated outage-reporting system at 800-769-3766 for Duke Energy customers and 800-419-6356 for Duke Energy Progressive customers.

In addition, Duke is providing updated on twitter (@DukeEnergy) and Facebook (Duke Energy).

The numbers of outages are expected to rise during the day on Friday and reports are that it could take several weeks to restore power, according to Duke Energy.

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