ORLANDO, Fla. -- About 500,000 residents in Orange County and other surrounding counties are still without electricity Monday and some may not have power restored for a week or even longer, according to a Local 6 News report.

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Officials said the hurricane-force wind gusts from Charley knocked down thousands of poles in Central Florida.

"We no doubt have a big job and while we are saying seven days in the Orange County area, we are looking at lengthy periods of time in the southern part of our service area, a Progress Energy official said Sunday afternoon.

Progress Energy hopes to have power restored in Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Volusia counties by Sunday.

From an all-time peak after the storm of 500,000 Central Florida customers without electricity, there were about 372,000 Progress Energy customers without power early Monday.

Orange County had 121,468 customers without power and Seminole County continued to have 84,000 without power Monday. There are also 50,000 customers without electricity in Volusia County, 16,422 customers in Osceola County and 46, 229 Polk County customers without power.

"We understand how frustrating it is not to have electricity," Progress Engergy's C.J. Drake said Sunday night. We are doing everything we can to get the power back on and working together, we will."

Progress Energy customers should call (800) 228-8485 to report an outage.

Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.