Pennsylvania, New Jersey Crews Are Heroes in Florida

Hurricane Milton is raging over Florida this week, and it's a community effort to help the communities impacted by the devastation. A handful of local crews and companies are in Florida to help with hurricane efforts, and the same is true for many other states across America. People from all over the country are in the Sunshine State to do what they can to help save lives.

Hurricane Milton made landfall Wednesday evening (Oct. 9) south of Tampa Bay in Siesta Key, Florida, but the good news is that now it's starting to taper offshore. Strong winds are still a major factor, though. "Earlier this morning, winds along the Atlantic Coast gusted up to 92 mph in Marineland, 87 mph in Daytona Beach and 76 mph at South Hutchinson Island," the Weather Channel reported on Thursday (Oct. 10). They added that, thankfully, "the hurricane will continue to track farther into the Atlantic by later Thursday morning and afternoon" and the expect the "rainfall and strong wind gusts" to continue to ease up "across the state through the day as Milton pulls away from the state and heads out to sea."As for Pennsylvania and New Jersey, FirstEnergy Corp. electric companies have sent more than 580 line workers and support personnel in crews to help Florida Power & Light and Duke Energy with anticipated power restoration. FirstEnergy electric companies in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and West Virginia are part of the mutual assistance effort. "FirstEnergy employees are answering the call to help rebuild communities expected to be impacted by Hurricane Milton," said John Huber, director of emergency preparedness at FirstEnergy.

The American Red Cross is gathering up workers and volunteers from across the U.S. to head down to Florida to help. In Michigan, Latoysa Rocks, the regional disaster officer at Red Cross Michigan Region, told Fox 2 that, "We currently have 66 Michigan volunteers who are already deployed down in the southeast. We are racing against the clock just to ensure that we have our volunteers ready." DTE in Michigan is also helping. They're often called into other states to help with power outages, and then those states return the favor and send crews when Michigan is in need. Right now, DTE has dispatched crews and hundreds of workers to Florida. "We have about 600 individuals from DTE as well as our contractors who are already down south supporting the Hurricane Helene efforts," Brian Calka, the president of distribution operations at DTE Energy, told Fox 2. The Board of Water and Light in Lansing is also sending workers down to Florida to work with other utility companies to help rebuild critical infrastructure.