Louisiana – Although majority of the Louisiana areas hardest hit by the Hurricane Ida should receive power by the end of the week, some area might remain without power for several weeks, officials say.
Some parts of the state including Lafourche, Plaquemines with the exception of Belle Chasse, St. Charles, Terrebonne and part of Jefferson might remain without power by the end of the month, the supply company said in a statement on their website.
A week after Ida hit the state, almost 600,000 people were still without power in Louisiana, despite all the efforts put in the process of getting power back to normal.
Entergy Louisiana, which provides electric service to more than 1 million customers, estimated that power will be restored to the vast majority of its customers by Wednesday.
“Electricity is one of the biggest challenges that we have across Southeast Louisiana. … There’s not an even rate of restoration going on, and that’s always going to be the case. I’m always happy to see people getting powered up, and some people are going to be quite a while,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Saturday.
Reportedly, more than 1.1 million people were left without electricity after Ida hit the state. That number lowers every day, but there are some areas that is pretty hard to get electricity back. According to Edwards, the electricity infrastructure needs serious improvement, but that’s heavy, expensive and long-term task.
“It is hard for me to imagine that we will ever have an electrical infrastructure — or other types of infrastructure as well — that can withstand a storm of this severity without any disruptions. But we know we can minimize those disruptions,” Edwards said.
More than 24,000 Entergy Louisiana storm crew members are currently working around the clock to get things back up and running as soon as possible.
“In addition to the 24,308 distribution poles damaged or destroyed, 29,084 spans of wire down, and 5,742 failed transformers … we have identified 212 transmission structures that have been destroyed by Hurricane Ida, meaning they have to be completely rebuilt,” the utility said in a statement on its website.
