JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Officials from Mayor Lenny Curry to JEA’S Director of Facilities and Fleet Services Baley Brunell say Jacksonville needs prepare for power outages with Hurricane Ian.
They’re preparing to get power restored as quickly as possible by getting their fleet ready today and calling in help from out of state.
JEA crews are getting their staging areas ready. One is at FSCJ's south campus in the Sandalwood neighborhood. The other is at the Jacksonville Equestrian Center.
Prepare to see more than 50 utility trucks crowd the lot. JEA has crews coming from Texas, Alabama and New England.
JEA crews have been trimming trees ahead of Hurricane Ian. JEA is doing what that they can pro-actively, but most of their response will be during or after the storm.
“Our goal is to make sure we can restore power as quickly and safely as possible back to our customers so that is why we do have mutual aid come in and assist us so we can do it a little bit faster," says Brunell.
About 50 crews are expected to start arrive between Wednesday and Thursday.
“At these sites, the mutual aid crews will have all the resources they need," Brunell said. "When they come in, we have food, materials, fueling and fleet support.”
When power goes out, there are priority levels.
- Level 1 includes hospitals, first responders, and nursing homes.
- Level 2 is neighborhood clusters of outages.
- Level 3 will be individual homes with outages.
You can report an outage online at JEA.com or by calling 665-6000. JEA's spokesperson suggests using the website, however Brunell says they will most likely know about the outage at the same time you do.