Getting the electricity back on in southwest Louisiana will be a long process. Governor John Bel Edwards says the Louisiana Public Service Commission’s initial damage estimate in the Lake Charles area found 172 towers damaged or destroyed.
“And I’m thinking wow that’s terrible that’s going to take a long time,” said Edwards. “Today they did a more complete damage assessment and they are reporting more than 500 transmission towers either damaged or destroyed.”
Edwards says the state went from a peak of 600,000 outages following Hurricane Laura to 368,000 as of 3 PM Sunday. The governor reports there are over 17,000 people from 29 states working on getting the power restored.
Residents in Allen, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, Jefferson Davis and Vernon Parish can apply for disaster aid through FEMA by going to disasterassistance.gov, calling their 1-800-621-FEMA or through the FEMA app. Edwards says so far more than 52,000 people in Louisiana have applied and he expects additional parishes will become eligible.
“We’re working on that, we have to do our damage assessments, we have to collect information, memorialize it, get it to FEMA and they will make those determinations,” said Edwards.
The number of Laura related fatalities is up to 14. Eight of the deaths are due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Edwards says for those residents who do not have power, he’s pleading with them not to run generators in their home.
“Don’t run them in a basement, a crawl space, don’t run them in a shed next to your house or garage, make sure they are at least 20 feet from your house in a well-ventilated area, not underneath your window,” said Edwards.
(Photo courtesy of Entergy’s newsroom.)
Comments