Lights blink out all over Louisiana

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Power will be back on soon, officials say

10/04/02

By Keith Darcé Business writer/The Times-Picayune

Hurricane Lili kept more than 74,000 customers in the dark into the night Thursday in metropolitan New Orleans as thousands of utility workers fanned across southern Louisiana to restore electricity to the more than 448,000 homes and businesses that lost power statewide.

Power was expected to be restored to most Entergy New Orleans and Entergy Louisiana customers in Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard and St. Charles parishes by late Thursday night, Entergy spokesman Chanel LaGarde said. The remaining Entergy outages in the region should be fixed by the end of today , he said.

Most of the local power outages were caused by broken neighborhood power lines downed by strong winds that knocked over trees, snapped limbs and blew down utility poles.

The damage was far more severe in the south-central part of Louisiana along the Gulf Coast and around Lafayette, where Lili's strongest winds ripped down large numbers of utility transmission lines connecting communities to power plants. Utility officials there said nearly everyone in that part of the state would be without power for several days, and that some customers might have to wait a week or more for electricity to be restored.

Orleans, Jefferson hit

At the peak of the blackouts early Thursday afternoon, about 133,000 utility customers were without service in New Orleans and surrounding suburbs. The hardest hit areas were Orleans Parish, which suffered about 46,000 outages, and Jefferson Parish, with about 45,000 outages.

Outages were especially high in neighborhoods in the Uptown, Lakefront and City Park areas of New Orleans, where densely treed streets are prone to blackouts caused by snapping branches and blowing limbs, said Entergy's vice president of corporate communications, Arthur Wiese Jr. Eastern New Orleans and West Bank neighborhoods also suffered large numbers of outages, he said.

By midafternoon Thursday, the number of customers without power had begun to decline as Lili's wind and rain subsided and utility crews made progress repairing lines and transformers, according to Entergy and Cleco Corp. officials.

Entergy New Orleans and Entergy Louisiana, subsidiaries of New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., supply electricity to the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, the River Parishes and other parts of the state, including much of Acadiana. Cleco, based in Pineville, supplies power to St. Tammany Parish, part of Acadiana and much of central Louisiana.

About 3,800 BellSouth Corp. customers in New Orleans and the surrounding suburbs lost phone service Thursday, BellSouth Louisiana spokesman Merlin Villar said. Work on those lines was expected to begin today after crews repair downed utility poles, he said.

Most of the phone outages should be fixed within a few days, Villar said.

No phone service

Statewide, at least 55,000 BellSouth customers lost service during the storm, and that number was expected to rise as evacuees returned home and reported problems with their phones, Villar said.

Around midday Thursday, Entergy began sending an army of 14,000 workers -- assembled from its own ranks and other power companies in 24 states -- across south Louisiana to repair the company's damaged power grid. It was the largest team ever assembled by the company to respond to a natural disaster in its four-state territory, Wiese said. Most of the workers arrived in Louisiana Wednesday from as far away as Illinois and Pennsylvania, he said.

Statewide, Entergy reported 243,000 outages, or about 20 percent of its 1.2 million Louisiana customers.

Cleco assembled and dispatched its own team of 3,000 utility line workers and tree trimmers from Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas, Cleco spokeswoman Ann Jenkins said. Some of the workers were brought into the state last week to help restore power after Tropical Storm Isidore and they never went home, she said.

About 165,000 Cleco customers, or 65 percent of the company's customer base, lost power during the storm, the largest number of outages ever suffered by the company in a single event, Cleco spokesman Michael Burns said.

About 40,000 customers of smaller utilities, many in central Louisiana, also lost power during the storm.

Though some outages in the New Orleans area were brief, others lasted for hours.

Taken for granted

Kylie Harris lost power at her home in the 4100 block of Constance Street in Uptown New Orleans around 9 a.m., and the lights didn't come back on until about 3:15 p.m.

She said the blackout was a big inconvenience, especially with three cats.

"It was very hot, and my pets were starting to reek because they were wet, and it was very humid," she said.

A few blocks away in the 1700 block of State Street, James Ryan, 89, was without power for about five hours. "You really don't appreciate electricity until it goes out," he said.

On City Park Avenue across from City Park, Entergy crews spent much of the afternoon replacing utility poles, electricity feeder wires and a transformer that were knocked out by a large oak tree.

In Covington, Cleco crews worked on a power line brought down by a falling 100-foot-tall pine tree on Eighth Street, Jenkins said. "That's pretty strong wind to bring down a tree like that," she said.

Power outages can be reported to Entergy by calling (800) 968-8243 or to Cleco by calling (800) 622-6537. In both cases, press 1 to select the outage reporting option.

Many residents wondered Thursday who was responsible for removing fallen trees.

In general, if a felled tree is on a public right of way, then it's the municipality's responsibility to remove the tree. If the tree is on private property, it's the responsibility of the property owner to remove it.

Entergy crews in some cases will remove trees or limbs to repair power lines. It is not the utility's responsibility to remove the debris, especially when crews are pressed to move on to other jobs. But Entergy said sometimes crews will haul the debris away.

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-- Anonymous, October 04, 2002

Answers

Nowhere near as bad as Floyd's effects on Durham!

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2002

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