Osceola County officials held Thursday what even they called an "upbeat" press conference mere hours after Hurricane Milton rolled through Osceola County.
Osceola Sheriff's Office Major Dan Weis reported no storm-related deaths or arrests, and there were no violations reported of the curfew that ended at 10 a.m.
Because of leadership response and citizen's preparation, it looks like it will be "business as usual" on Friday, with all offices open except for schools, which remain closed Friday as maintenance and facilities teams evaluate campuses and power is restored. Five schools were still without power midday Thursday, but students were not expected back until Tuesday anyway, as Monday was a scheduled teacher inservice day anyway.
"We don't foresee anything stopping us from being able to open Monday for teachers," Osceola County Schools Superintendent Mark Shanoff said Thursday.
Aside from that, the complete response -- from leaders to the community which filled over 200,000 sandbags and braced for a significant hit that never really materialized -- was lauded.
"It really takes a village to pull this off, and we all worked so well together," Osceola County Commissioner said of her Kissimmee, St. Cloud, utility, school district and Emergency Management cohorts. "We will be able to meet all of our community's needs in the aftermath."
Emergency Management Director Bill Litton said Osceola County "fared much better" than anticipated, likely because Milton's heavier rains were confined to the I-4 corridor.
"That alleviated concerns of flooding," he said. "We worked with the state to have resources staged for a response. From there it was a great partnership and a team effort, with our partners and the residents."
The worst of the weather rolled through between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m., with rains of 4 to 7 inches across the area, and winds gusted to high-end tropical storm strength, with a high gust of 76 mph at the Kissimmee Airport. The biggest impact were power losses that knocked out traffic lights into Thursday, downed tree limbs, a few bigger ones that came down on power lines knocking out more electricity, and some minor mobile home damage.
Kissimmee Utility Authority reported about 15,000 of its 93,000 customers lost service at the height of the storm before daybreak and its crews and contracted ones from out of state tackled the outages, with the number below 1,000 by dinnertime with the intent to restore all service by Thursday night. OUC said about 46% of its St. Cloud service area lost power, restored about a third of them by midday Thursday, said it would restore all power within 48 hours. Duke Energy, which powers homes in and around Poinciana, said Milton did "significant damage to its system," and some Osceola customers without flood and meter box damage will see restoration by Friday afternoon.
Toho Water Authority reported no issues with the water supply.
Curbside trash service will resume Friday, and if Wednesday or Thursday were your normal days, you can put trash to the curb Friday by 6:30 a.m. for collection. This is not for storm debris; put that out on next week's normal large collection day, or take it to a debris collection area at Canoe Creek Road and Bramble Wood Drive which will be open from Oct. 12-20 from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Lynx restarted bus service late Thursday and expects Friday to be a normal day. SunRail will take back to the tracks on Monday after leaders assure track safety.
