JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — JEA crews are working hard to restore power to the First Coast as Tropical Storm Ian continues to batter the area.
JEA managing director and CEO, Jay Stowe, said their crews have been busy preparing for Ian, which is bringing strong winds and heavy rain to the First Coast.
"We have 2,000 people. Our operation crews are experienced in this and they're going to do a great job kind of restoring things once the storm comes through," Stowe said.
JEA said they have mutual aid crews and contractors coming in to help offer support. Nearly 15,000 JEA customers are impacted by outages as of 4:40 p.m. Thursday, according to the company's outage map.
In a statement, JEA said they've made significant progress to restore power throughout the day. They said that at peak outages, 20,000 customers were impacted, which is just shy of 4% of their total customers.
"We want people to be safe, take care of themselves and their homes," Stowe said. "The crews are getting trucks ready right now."
Northeast Public Power Association (NEPPA) arrived on the First Coast Wednesday night to provide aid. The general manager of NEPPA, Nick Lawler, said they brought 24 crews with them from the northeast.
"For us, it's always supporting public power the best we can," Lawler said. "It's what we do."
Lawler said there's 2,000 of them across the country that go out during severe storm events.
"There's no better feeling for the guys than restoring electrify to people that need it," Lawler said. "That's our job."
WATCH: JEA crews work to restore power along the Southside