Hundreds Of Thousands Are Still Without Power In Louisiana. Some Could Be For Weeks

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A man uses a flashlight to help others shop in the dark at a convenience store after the effects of Hurricane Ida knocked out power across New Orleans.

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Eric Gay/AP

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As of Wednesday night, more than 175,000 homes and businesses in Orleans parish were still without power, according to the site PowerOutage.US.

«At this time, we cannot predict when your power will be restored,» Entergy told customers on Twitter. «We will provide an estimated restoration time and other information about your outage as soon as it’s available. We apologize for this inconvenience.»

Major transmission lines are down. So are backup systems

In a later tweet, Michelle Bourg, vice president of transmission asset management for the company, explained the root cause of the problem stemmed from damage to eight major transmission lines, which she described as critical highways.

«They bring power into the region to serve our customers and all eight of those were rendered out of service by devastating winds,» Bourg said.

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Another major obstacle, the utility company said, is that Ida’s 150 mph winds also severely limited much of the redundancy built into the electric system.

«This makes it difficult to move power around the region to customers, and limits options to power customers in the event of equipment failure or additional damage to the system.

It could be weeks with no power for some residents

Meanwhile, just west of New Orleans, St. Charles Parish residents face a more grim future.

«Residents should prepare to be without power for at least a month,» city officials warned Tuesday. More than 21,000 homes and businesses were still without power on Wednesday night, according to PowerOutage.US.

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