Commissioners with the City of Coral Gables voted Tuesday to sue Florida Power & Light over the company's response to power outages after Hurricane Irma knocked out power to tens of thousands of residents last month.
The city has said they want an improved infrastructure, including underground power lines. A city spokesperson said the city attorney will try to meet with FPL to settle the issue, but if that doesn't happen, the city will file the lawsuit.
Coral Gables fined FPL in the days after Irma, criticizing the company for not being prepared and for not meeting deadlines for restoring service.
FPL blamed the outages on the city's treescape.
"Our focus is on restoring power to all of our customers, and we will not be moved by self-entitled politicians who are looking for someone to blame for the City’s irresponsibly managed tree program," FPL said in a statement at the time. "The fact is the city of Coral Gables has for many years resisted FPL’s well-documented efforts to trim trees and harden our electric system. Unfortunately for our customers in that area, they are now paying the price in terms of extended outages due to hundreds of trees that have fallen into our lines."
As of Tuesday night, FPL had not replied to requests for comments from NBC 6.
