Late today as winds and storm feeder bands began to diminish in southeast and southwest Florida, Florida Power & Light Company began deploying its manpower and resources to staging sites in hard-hit regions to begin assessing damage and restoring service.

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Progress was made in restoring service today and by late evening about 375,000 FPL customers' homes and businesses remained without power as a result of Tropical Storm Gabrielle's destructive pass through Florida. Approximately 300,000 customers were without service in the counties FPL serves on Florida's west coast and about 75,000 in counties FPL serves in northeast Florida.

FPL said it has approximately 7,000 employees and contract workers involved in restoration efforts. Many of those workers joined convoys headed for staging sites at the Sarasota Fairgrounds and in North Port at the Toledo Blade Service Center. As the storm exits FPL's east coast, the need for staging sites and additional resources in northeast Florida will also be assessed.

"We care about two things as we look at the work ahead of us this weekend -- the safety of our workers and the safety of customers," said Armando Olivera, FPL senior vice president of power systems. "We want to get everyone's power back with as little inconvenience as possible, and as quickly as possible. In that respect damage assessment will be one of our top priorities at daybreak."

FPL continues to urge customers to be extremely careful after the storm -- particularly after dark. Stay away from any dangling wires or downed poles and do not to walk into standing water. If you see any sparking wires or downed lines, or to report an outage, please call 1-800-4OUTAGE (1-800-468-8243).

FPL said that customers who have called to report an outage do not need to report it again. FPL will do its best to keep customers updated on restoration plans via the news media and its "Storm Center" site at http://www.fpl.com/.

  As of 10 p.m. Friday, outages by county were:

  Southwest Florida     Northeast/Central Florida
  Collier - 10,000      Brevard - 15,000
  Lee - 22,500          Seminole - 5,000
  Charlotte - 30,000    Volusia -- 30,000
  DeSoto - 2,500        Flagler -- 5,000
  Manatee - 105,000     Putnam - 5,000
  Sarasota - 130,000    St. Johns - 15,000

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SOURCE: Florida Power & Light Company