Gulf Power stands ready for the impacts of Hurricane Michael and encourages its customers to be prepared as well. The latest forecast projects landfall somewhere in the Panama City vicinity as a category 3, possibly 4, hurricane Wednesday afternoon. On the current track, tropical storms force winds could extend as far west as Pensacola, with the greatest impact to the Panama City area.

In addition to the 1,517 Gulf Power employees and contractors, more than 2,240 outside resources will be in Northwest Florida to assist with power restoration.  

“Michael is a powerful storm and it looks like our customers in Panama City area will be the most heavily impacted. With a storm of this magnitude, power restoration in the hardest hit areas may take up to a week or more due to anticipated storm impacts.” said Rick DelaHaya, Gulf Power spokesperson. “But all customers need to be prepared for tropical storm-force winds, which could lead to prolonged, widespread outages.

Gulf Power crews will work throughout the day and night to restore any outages until winds reach 35 mph, when it becomes unsafe. Once the storm passes, crews will quickly work to determine the damage and begin to work as quickly and safely as possible to restore power.

“Customers can be assured that we will work every minute to restore power as long as it is safe to do so,” DelaHaya said. “We our working our storm plans. We have already been tested this year with Subtropical Storm Alberto and Tropical Storm Gordon, so we are ready.”

Public Information Officer Debbie Ward can be reached at dward@pcbgov.com or (334) 714-6793.