Entergy crews made significant progress in northeast Louisiana over the weekend. Entergy says it has now restored power to 90% of customers affected by last week’s ice storm, accounting for more than 118,000 customers. Nyka Scott, the vice president of customer service at Entergy, says this is just one component to the recovery process.
“This is an ice storm like we’ve never seen in this area. The damages are significant. And even once the power is restored, some of these hardest-hit areas are going to have a long time before they’re fully recovered,” Scott said.
Scott says there’s widespread damage to the electricity grid, including almost 1,000 utility poles. She says more than 500 miles of wire and 210 transformers need to be repaired or replaced.
Scott says as crews restore power to the last remaining customers still in the dark, they’re still running into vegetation issues, which is making the process much, much longer.
“When we can get a line restored, you have a limb fall or a branch fall and take more customers out that we have to restore for a second, sometimes third or fourth time,” Scott explained.
Scott says many of the customers still without power are in areas which are not easily accessible.
“And a lot of these few remaining customers are in very rural, hard-access areas, so sometimes our equipment is getting bogged down,” Scott said.
Scott says she expects the last customer to be restored by Wednesday.