In a state built on air conditioning, millions of Florida residents now want to know one thing: When will the power be back on?

Hurricane Irma’s march across Florida and into the Southeast triggered one of the bigger blackouts in U.S. history, plunging as many as 13 million people into the dark as the storm dragged down power lines and blew out transformers. It also shattered the climate-controlled bubbles that enable people to live there despite the state’s heat, humidity and insects.

Those who evacuated ahead of the hurricane are returning to homes without electricity and facing the prospect of days or even weeks with little to ease the late-summer stickiness.

“Power, power, power,” Gov. Rick Scott said. “The biggest thing we’ve got to do for people is get their power back.”

The Irma blackout is still much smaller than a 2003 outage that put 50 million people in the dark. More than 50,000 utility workers — some from as far away as Canada and California — are responding to the crisis, according to the association that represents the nation’s investor-owned utilities.