Rack Electric owner after Idalia: 'It's our time to step up'

BOCA RATON, Fla. — A South Florida electric company is sending crews to the Tallahassee and Fort Myers area to help with power restoration following Hurricane Idalia's landfall.

At Rack Electric in Boca Raton, crews are heading to Florida's Gulf coast to help people who've lost power after Hurricane Idalia made landfall Wednesday.

"Our team kind of goes into a Code Red. Our after-hours calls, our technicians are on emergency call, stocking generators, stocking water, stocking all the stuff that we could need to handle a catastrophe," Jesse Rack, owner of Rack Electric, said. Rack Electric is sending a crew of 12 to the areas affected by Hurricane Idalia. Rack said they already have four trucks in Fort Myers and Tallahassee.

The trucks are full of essentials like water bottles and portable generators.

"Through Generac, we've had conversations that if anybody needs any materials or parts, we have full inventory and they can call us to get them," Rack said. Last year, when Hurricane Nicole made landfall on Hutchinson Island, many customers in that area lost power.

WPTV spoke with Margaret and Gary Cabral shortly after the storm hit. They were waiting for a generator to be installed at the time. "It gets hot pretty quickly and you can't go sit outside in the middle of a storm, so you're like, 'This is not really pleasant,'" Margaret Cabral said.

So, Rack and his crews are hoping to help keep that from happening to people living in the eye of this storm.

"When a storm is on the horizon, this is like our Super Bowl," Rack said. "It's our time to step up. It's our time to put in the extra hours, put in the man hours, to make sure that people have backup power."

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