Hurricane Isaias Leaves Over 260,000 Without Power

Hurricane Isaias made landfall near Destin, Florida, at about 8:30 p.m. Friday as a Category 2 storm, with winds up to 105 mph before weakening as it moved north across the Panhandle. Hurricane warnings and evacuation orders covered parts of the northern Gulf Coast, where forecasters warned of damaging winds and storm surge of up to 9 feet; gusts near landfall reached 116 mph. The storm caused widespread outages in Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties, leaving more than 260,000 customers without electricity by about 9:15 p.m. Separately, outages affected more than 4,300 customers in Oahu’s Nanakuli and Waianae areas, nearly 3,000 Indiana Michigan Power customers on Fort Wayne’s north side, about 2,500 FirstEnergy customers in the Akron and Portage Lakes area, and about 450 properties in Malvern, England. Crews were working to restore service in the affected Indiana, Ohio and English areas, while the cause of the Akron-area outage was under investigation.