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Insights > Hurricane Ida Daily News Conference – 9/3/21
Hurricane Ida Daily News Conference – 9/3/21
09/03/2021
Three days after Entergy brought first light into the area devastated by Hurricane Ida, and in the fifth day of restoration, the company continues to make significant progress assessing damage, repairing infrastructure and restoring power, and we now have estimated times of restoration for all but the hardest-hit parishes.
Deanna Rodriguez, Entergy New Orleans President and CEO, Phillip May, Entergy Louisiana President and CEO, and John Hawkins, Entergy Louisiana Vice President of Distributions provided an update on that progress in this recorded news conference. Key takeaways are:
- We have now completed assessing 100% of New Orleans and 71% of damaged areas in Louisiana and have developed estimated restoration times for customers in all but the hardest-hit areas.
- We have restored a total of 225,000 customers in all of Louisiana, from a peak of 904,000 who lost power due to Hurricane Ida.
- We are still working to assess damage in those hardest-hit parishes, but access remains a challenge. It could be weeks before these areas are fully restored, but we don’t have all of the information needed to make that determination.
- WPEC Unit 1 in Washington Parish is now online. We continue to bring critical customers back online, including Ochsner’s mains campuses in Metairie and Baton Rouge and their Westbank campus. We also brought on parts of Kenner and Hammond Thursday night.
- We released restoration times for many of the affected communities. Specific restoration times down to the local area, including the coast and areas in the immediate path of the storm, are continuing to be developed and will be released in the coming days. Learn more here. However, we do have some more granular information on neighborhoods available now that can be found at www.entergy.com/hurricaneida
- These estimates are subject to change as we complete our assessments and continue with restoration work in the affected areas. We will issue updates to these estimates as we learn more.
- We had some big wins in the Greater New Orleans area yesterday. We were able to restore the primary feed to the Sewage and Water Board and we now have three of the eight major transmission lines that serve the greater New Orleans area back into service. We also have 17 of the 27 impacted substations in the New Orleans area ready to serve customers.
- In Entergy New Orleans, our equipment has sustained the following damage:
- 847 poles
- 686 spans of wire. A span of wire is
- 289 transformers
- In Entergy Louisiana, the damage numbers are as follows:
- 9,202 poles
- 11,859 spans of wire
- 1,189 transformers.
Customers who have damaged homes or businesses should ensure they are prepared to take power when we are able to restore it to them:
- Customers with property damage may require special action to speed their restoration. Learn more here.
We urge customers to remember to put safety first, particularly when it comes to generator safety and safety around power lines and in flooded areas. For tips on staying safe in the days after a storm, visit our safety page on the Entergy Storm Center.
The next days and weeks will be difficult for our region, but our workforce is here to lead the recovery, working until the last light is turned on.
