More than 1.6-million US customers still without power from Hurricane Helene

More than 1.6-million homes and businesses in the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and other US southeastern and midwestern states were still without power on Monday after Helene slammed into the Florida Panhandle as a major hurricane on September 26, according to data from PowerOutage.us.

Those outages were down from around 2.1-million earlier in the day as utilities continue to restore power. In total, the storm knocked out service to around 5.5-million customers.

Helene's winds, rain and storm surge killed more than 100 people, according to a Reuters tally of state and local officials. US energy company Duke Energy had the most power outages in the Carolinas with about 415,601 customers still out in South Carolina and 287,369 out in North Carolina, according to PowerOutage.us.

Duke said on Sunday it restored power to more than 1.1-million customers in the Carolinas and expected to restore service to most customers by Friday.

Duke's storm director for the Carolinas, Jason Hollifield, however, said: "There are lots of areas across the South Carolina upstate and North Carolina mountains where we're going to have to completely rebuild parts of our system, not just repair it."

Here are the major outages by state:

• South Carolina 694,518;
• Georgia 505,726;
• North Carolina 404,303;
• Florida 82,874;
• Virginia 85,278;
• Ohio 15,921; and
• West Virginia 17,153.

The total number of those without power stands at 1,678,563.

Reuters