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Storm Center > Crews Assessing Damages, Restoring Power in Louisiana Following Hurricane Delta
Crews Assessing Damages, Restoring Power in Louisiana Following Hurricane Delta
10/10/2020
Crews are continuing to assess damages and restore power where it is safe to do so after Hurricane Delta exited the state Saturday morning.
At its peak Saturday morning, the storm knocked out power to approximately 320,000 customers, with the majority being in the hardest-hit areas of Calcasieu, Cameron, Ouachita and East Baton Rouge parishes. As of 6 p.m. Saturday, the number of customers remaining without power was approximately 215,000.
Estimated restoration times will be provided as damage assessments are completed.
A growing team of more than 8,000 made progress Saturday working to repair the damage left by Delta, which made landfall Friday evening near Creole, Louisiana, as a Category 2 hurricane. Although the storm weakened as it moved inland, Delta still produced damaging wind gusts, lightning, and heavy rainfall in Louisiana as far east as Tangipahoa Parish and as far north as Ouachita Parish.
Delta made landfall less than 15 miles from where Hurricane Laura made landfall six weeks ago. While Laura was a much stronger storm, Delta had a larger wind field that caused damage and outages across a broader area of Entergy service territory in Louisiana
Damage assessments could take up to three days. Our scouts are assessing damage to determine the exact cause of outages and how long it will take to restore power. The company is using drones, helicopters and high-water vehicles to assess damage in hard to access areas.
Accurate damage assessments allow for planning an efficient restoration plan that first concentrates on restoring power to critical community infrastructure and essential services such as hospitals, water treatment plants, police and fire stations, and communication systems. Then, resources are directed to work that safely restores the greatest number of customers as quickly as possible.
Crews are encountering a variety of obstacles. In southwest Louisiana, a number of outages were caused by airborne debris left from the community’s restoration efforts following Laura.
In the greater Baton Rouge area, crews have restored nearly 50% of the customers affected by the storm. Heavy vegetation and services in backyards continue to pose accessibility challenges for our crews.
In north Louisiana, crews are finding instances where flooding and ground saturation has uprooted trees and high winds have caused limbs to fall onto our lines and electric equipment. Additionally, in Winnsboro, a substation has flooded, and crews are working to perform field switching to restore some of the customers that are served from that station.
Customers can stay informed about restoration progress by downloading the Entergy App at entergyapp.com, visiting Entergy’s View Outages map, signing up for text alerts by texting REG to 36778 and have your account number and ZIP code handy. The registration pattern is as follows including spaces: REG (account number) (ZIP code). Once registered, text OUT to 36778 to report an outage. You can also report an outage online as a guest.
Customers also can follow Entergy Louisiana on Facebook and Twitter.
