Hurricane Helene causes widespread power outages

Strong winds from Hurricane Helene, one of the most powerful storms to hit the Southeast, flooded roads and cut power in multiple states. AP Photo/Mike Carlson Hurricane Helene left more than 4 million homes and businesses in the dark across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas after hitting Florida’s Big Bend region as a powerful Category 4 storm late on Sept. 26, 2024. As Helene’s rains moved inland, and mountain rivers caused devastating flooding, officials warned that fixing downed utility lines and restoring power would take days in some areas. Electricity is essential to just about everyone – rich and poor, old and young. Yet, when severe storms strike, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities often wait longest to recover. That isn’t just a perception. We analyzed data from over 15 million consumers in 588 U.S. counties who lost power when hurricanes made landfall between January 2017 and October 2020. The results show that poorer communities did indeed wait longer for the lights to go back on. A 10 percentile drop in socioeconomic status in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social vulnerability index was associated with a 6.1% longer outage on average. This corresponds to waiting an extra 170 minutes on average...