The six Florida television stations that were knocked offline by Hurricane Ian last week are transmitting once again, according to new information released by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Tuesday.
A total of seven radio stations — five on the FM dial and two AM stations — are still not broadcasting one week after the Category 4 storm made landfall on Florida’s southwestern coast, the FCC said.
The radio stations are mostly in the Fort Myers area, which saw the brunt of the storm when it made landfall last Wednesday.
The majority of the outages were the result of widespread electrical service disruptions in Florida. At its peak, nearly two million people were without power and other utilities in Florida after the electrical grid sustained heavy damage. Portions of the power grid will have to be completely rebuilt, which means some customers may be without electricity for about a month, according to local utility officials.
Power outages have also been blamed for cable, landline phone and wired Internet disruptions in Florida, with just over 400,000 customers still without one or more of those services as of Tuesday, the FCC said. The number is about half the affected customers reported on October 1, when the FCC said more than 800,000 customers were without cable, landline phone or wired Internet service.
The FCC said it is attempting to accelerate access to phone and Internet service by granting T-Mobile and Verizon a Special Temporary Authority (STA) to restore wireless communications in areas affected by cell phone outages and disruptions of other services.
