Crews are out attempting to restore power throughout the path of Hurricane Laura. Cleco spokesperson Jennifer Cahill says they are receiving additional manpower to restore service to their customers.
“In addition to nearly 2,000 Cleco personnel and contractors that we had in place before Hurricane Laura made landfall, Clecohas secured an additional 425 line mechanics,” said Cahill.
Cahill says crews are seeing widespread damage with broken utility poles, down wires, and structural damage.
“There’s a lot of debris to clean up and clear to even get to the system to start making repairs,” said Cahill.
As of Friday morning, Cleco is reporting about 100,000 of their customers are without power. About 40-percent of those outages are in Rapides Parish.
Entergy Vice President of Customer Service Melonie Stewart says most of the customers that are out are primarily in Calcasieu and Ouachita Parishes. Stewart says when the winds died down, assessment teams took to the skies to help formulate a plan on the best response.
“We were able to mobilize a couple of helicopters so that we can get some eyes on our facilities to really understand the damage,” said Stewart.
Entergy has 6200 workers in the state. Stewart says some customers may be without power for weeks as restoration has to be prioritized to best benefit the health and safety of communities.
“Hospitals, communication systems, water and sewer treatment, police and fire, those are the customers that we have to energize first,” said Stewart.
Entergy has 240,000 customers in the dark and SWEPCO is reporting about 128,000 outages.
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