Florida Power & Light Co. has announced it has completed the reconstruction of its electrical infrastructure in Charlotte and DeSoto counties, thirteen days after Hurricane Charley devastated Punta Gorda, Port Charlotte and Arcadia. Electric service has been restored to virtually all customers' homes and business that are now able to receive power.

FPL had targeted Sunday, August 29 as its completion date for Charlotte and DeSoto, but excellent progress throughout the week allowed the major work to be finished three days ahead of schedule. "The success of this rebuilding effort belongs to our customers and dedicated restoration team," Geisha Williams, vice president for electrical distribution, said. "Today, we are glad to announce that we have rebuilt the electrical infrastructure and restored power to virtually all customers able to receive electrical service."

FPL's storm planning has been honed by lessons learned from numerous storms. Williams praised the company's great pre-storm planning, which includes a yearly "dry run" drill of a mock storm. Williams said the company's use of state of the art outage management systems, GPS mapping technology and advanced logistics tracking systems greatly improved and enhanced its efforts. "Our yearly planning and training coupled with the tireless dedication and commitment of our employees, resulted in excellent execution of our storm plan," Williams said.

At the height of Charley's destruction, 874,000 FPL customers found themselves without power and some, in the hardest hit areas in Southwest Florida, without homes. FPL assembled a team of more than 10,000 line crews, tree trimmers and support personnel and moved quickly to rebuild and restore power to its customers.

While FPL crews worked in the field to restore power, the company launched an effort that raised a half million dollars for victims of Hurricane Charley in less than two weeks. FPL matched customer and employee donations dollar-for-dollar up to $250,000. The company established a relief fund in cooperation with the American Red Cross to provide assistance to those affected by Hurricane Charley.

"The generosity of our employees and customers has been overwhelming," Armando Olivera, president of Florida Power & Light, said. "We extend our most sincere appreciation to all of our customers and employees for their generous contribution to the FPL-Red Cross Fund to help the men, women and children affected by this terrible storm."

While residents in Punta Gorda, Arcadia and Port Charlotte, may see a number of restoration workers begin to leave, the company reports that an adequate number of crews will remain in the area to continue clean up operations and help restore service to customers whose homes or businesses are unable to receive electric service at this time. "A number of crews will gradually begin to leave the area," Williams said. "Although power is back, there is still some work to be done to bring the system back to pre-Charley conditions."

"At FPL we are very proud to serve our 4.2 million customers with safe, dependable electricity," Williams said. "We thank the thousands of contractors and personnel from other utilities who joined our FPL employees in our rebuilding and restoration effort. Without their contributions, we would not have been able to complete our work so soon."