More than 600,000 customers of Entergy in Louisiana were still without electricity on Saturday, six days after Hurricane Ida’s attack, but the power company was beginning to move forward by returning parts of the New Orleans metropolitan area to the grid after to establish the time limits within which individual neighborhoods would achieve service. back.
In the early evening, the company reported that nearly a third of New Orleans residents and businesses had electricity, a severe 20% wear that could turn on lights and air conditioning on Friday, and 27% restored since Saturday morning. .
Restorations brought 12,000 customers online to New Orleans on Saturday, enough to give hope that the shutdown could end soon with the 138,000 still left in the dark.
But anywhere else in the state, where storm damage was most severe, major disruptions were maintained.
Only about 10% of Jefferson Parish customers regained their power and more than 600,000 receiving electricity from Entergy went at night without electricity across the state. More than 900,000 customers lost electricity after Ida Category 4 winds sent much of the New Orleans region to a blackout Sunday night.
Even in New Orleans, as deadlines approached and passed and individual houses and blocks escaped as neighbors lit up, frustrations over inaccurate outage maps, and lack of information from the electric company continued to simmer in the summer heat.
About six hundred people packed their bags and boarded city-bound buses destined for air-conditioned shelters anywhere else in the state, and at least some residents took the flight on their own.
When winds from Hurricane Ida knocked down transmission lines and submerged the New Orleans area in the dark Sunday night, many residents turned …
With power transmission over long-distance lines already safe, the task ahead was to repair thousands of utility poles, along with hundreds of street-level transformers and cables. Entergy, Louisiana President and CEO Phillip May said at a briefing Saturday morning that he said more sticks were destroyed in the storm than in Hurricane Laura, which devastated southwest Louisiana. last year, or in Hurricanes Katrina, Delta and Zeta together.
“This storm is clearly one of the most devastating things we’ve ever seen in southern Louisiana,” May said, “No storm has even come close to that in terms of the devastation it has caused to our system.”
Entergy said Friday that most New Orleans subway neighborhoods are likely to regain their energy over the next five days as the city returns to …
The company still expects the “vast majority” of New Orleans customers to have electricity on Sept. 8 and has set the same deadline for the east bank of Jefferson Parish and the more urbanized areas of its West Bank. Clients of the parish of St. Bernard can expect them to be restored the day before.
But further from the city center, residents in less populated areas in the far east of New Orleans East, in lower Jefferson Parish and throughout Plaquemines Parish can expect to be in the dark until the end of the month.
CLECO reported that 74% of its customers in St. Tammany Parish and 47% of his customers in Washington Parish had restored power on Saturday.
Throughout the day, residents and elected officials went on social media to announce that they had returned to their areas, a process made possible after Entergy returned three more transmission lines to the area. This raised the total number to six, providing a full charge to the city, May said. The two remaining transmission lines included include ones that passed through a tower that collapsed during the Ida. Crews shot down those lines with explosives Friday night.
A wide strip of Carrollton and Uptown restored power on Friday or Saturday afternoon, as did a splinter of Gentilly and large areas of New Orleans East.
Noting that New Orleans East is typically among the last neighborhoods to restore power, council member Cyndi Nguyen, who represents the area, said “we are changing history.”
However, it was difficult to measure the extent of these repairs due to the frequent problems with the Entergy outage map.
Populations at risk are fighting five days after the storm wiped out power in the New Orleans region
Deanna Rodriguez, president and CEO of Entergy New Orleans, advised residents to leave the map altogether and instead send a text message to STAT at 36778 or check the Entergy app for updates at their address.
However, progress was not uniform in the neighborhoods. Elaine Leyda, president of the Carrollton Riverbend Neighbors Association, said she and several Dublin Street residents were still without electricity on Saturday, a day after Entergy calculated her area would have electricity. It was frustrating because many other residents nearby had already regained power.
There were no visible signs of damage to the area lines and Leyda said she had not had a clear sense on the part of the power company of what had failed.
The stench of sewage was almost unbearable in the Ashton Park subdivision near Slidell on Wednesday, according to residents watching the sewage …
“I think the schedule was a good idea, but they have to take responsibility for the parts that haven’t come back yet,” Leyda said. “They have to stand up and say,‘ Wow, I’m sorry you don’t have power yet. Here is the problem we are trying to solve “.
Leyda said she and her tenant and neighbor were engaged as much as possible with fans with battery, ice and burning beautiful fuel on car trips to be in the air conditioning.
The “vast majority” of Orleans parish is expected to return to power on Wednesday.
But the big concern was that Entergy had already pushed toward other neighborhoods to try to regain power in large chunks of the city at once, and would only return and restore those that were missing at the end of the process.
“The greatest good for the greatest number is always charming until you’re one of the problems,” he said.
Staff writer Faimon Roberts contributed to this report.