- The hardest-hit parishes in Louisiana won’t have power fully restored until September 29.
- Hurricane Ida wiped out power for 1 million people; as of Saturday, 469,000 households still lacked power.
- The hurricane destroyed or damaged a “staggering” 22,000 power poles, Entergy Louisiana said.
Some parts of Louisiana hit by Hurricane Ida won’t have electricity fully restored for weeks, Entergy Louisiana said on Saturday.
Ida, which struck Louisiana as a Category 4 storm, made landfall on August 29 and wiped out power for more than one million customers. As of Saturday afternoon, roughly 469,000 Entergy customers across the state still lacked power according to the company, including 138,000 in New Orleans.
“Because of the extent of damage and rebuilding required, we expect recovery to be difficult and challenging, and customers in the hardest-hit areas in Louisiana should expect extended power outages lasting for weeks,” Entergy Louisiana said in a statement.
Entergy Louisiana said five parishes — Lafourche Parish, Lower Jefferson Parish, Plaquemines Parish, St. Charles Parish, and Terrebonne Parish — won’t have fully restored power until September 29.
The company said it has a workforce of roughly 27,000 from 41 states, all of them assessing damage and working on restoring service.
“The company will explore every option to expedite restoration,” Entergy Louisiana said in its Saturday update. The company added that the estimated restoration dates represented “the vast majority of customers for a given parish,” but that “a few customers in the most affected areas could still be without power for longer.”
The hurricane destroyed or damaged a “staggering” 22,000 power poles, Entergy’s president and CEO said, according to the Associated Press. The storm’s damage also included 5,200 failed transformers and 26,000 downed spans of wire.