Power crews from Northeast Ohio head to Florida after nearly 5 million residents left in the dark

Power crews are working overtime in Florida after more than 5 million people are without electricity after Hurricane Irma devastated the state.

Help is on the way from Northeast Ohio as Ohio Edison and other companies send workers to help relief efforts.

There are 600 First Energy employees and 300 contractors already in the Sarasota area after waiting out the storm in Tennessee for several days.

Brian Kern is one of the folks headed to Florida. For him, it's personal: pic.twitter.com/c04J2tI1HD

— Sarah Phinney (@sarahphinneytv) September 14, 2017

About 250 First Energy employees and 350 contractors left Thursday morning. They will travel about half way to Florida to spend the night before arriving in Florida on Friday.

Florida Power and Light's outage map show 1.4 million customers are still without power following Hurricane Irma.

First Energy crews and contractors will be setting poles, hanging transformers, stringing new wires and fixing transmission facilities until power is restored to the sunshine state.