Power returns to New Orleans area for most, though not all, who lost it during Hurricane Francine

Two days after Hurricane Francine rolled through Louisiana, local power companies were making steady progress trimming trees, repairing electricity lines and restoring service to customers across the New Orleans metro area and along the coast, though they warned that outages in some areas would persist through the weekend.

With the extended outages that followed Hurricane Ida still fresh in many residents' minds, Entergy and other Louisiana utilities were under pressure to demonstrate a quicker response to a storm that caused significantly less damage than Ida to the regional grid. By late Friday afternoon, Entergy, Cleco Power and other utilities had restored electricity to more than three out of four of the nearly 390,000 customers who lost power during Wednesday's storm.

Just under 90,000 customers remained without power in the region, with many of those customers located in the hard-hit areas of Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes. Orleans Parish had pockets of persistent outages, representing around 5,300 customers, still to be tackled, according to Entergy outage maps. The 10,000 outages in Jefferson Parish as of Friday evening were largely in Kenner, though some other neighborhoods were reporting persistent power issues on both the east and west banks.

Entergy executives promised that 90% of their affected customers would be back online by Monday, with urban areas coming back quicker and coastal parishes taking longer to reconnect to the grid.

In a Friday morning conference call, Michelle Bourg, Entergy Louisiana's head of customer service, said restoration was a complicated, time-consuming process but that they were moving quickly to fix issues.

"Our hard working responders made tremendous progress to restore more than 65% of Entergy Louisiana and Entergy New Orleans customers, less than 48 hours after Hurricane Francine landfall," Bourg said.

Transmission system intact

Francine's eye tore into Terrebonne Parish at about 5 p.m. on Wednesday as a Category 2 hurricane and quickly it made its way northeast, causing wind damage to trees and properties and in some cases overwhelming drainage systems. Power was knocked out in many neighborhoods across the region, and some areas suffered extensive street flooding that made its way into homes.

Still, many residents and public officials expressed relief that the storm wasn't as destructive as Hurricane Ida in September 2021, when powerful Category 4 winds caused catastrophic damage to transmission lines that left New Orleans and other areas out of power for weeks and months.

Deanna Rodriguez, CEO of Entergy New Orleans, said she expects that 90% of the 53,000 customers in Orleans Parish who lost power due to Francine would be back online by the end of the day Friday.

Hotels, bars, retailers and office blocks in the French Quarter and Central Business District, where power lines are buried underground, escaped the blackouts and some even made a party of the storm. Many New Orleans area businesses in other areas quickly got back to normal when the storm had passed.

But pockets in Kenner and along Airline Highway in Jefferson Parish, and in Hollygrove, Gentilly and on the West Bank in New Orleans were among the last to get service back. Elderly residents found the wait hardest to deal with.

'No critical needs'

Ethel Joseph was standing outside her Apple Street home in Hollygrove Friday morning, directing family members to the gas station to fill up on fuel for a generator that is running her refrigerator and air conditioner. She said she hadn’t been able to get any information from Entergy about when her power will be restored, even though many nearby homes are back in service.

“It’s terrible what they are doing to us,” she said. “The crazy part is it’s a beautiful sunny day in New Orleans. You can drive around the city and there are no power lines down and no trees down.”

By Friday afternoon, power remained out at several of the city’s 68 senior living facilities, including Boyd Manor, Deaconness Apartments, Oak Villa Apartments, and the Redemptorist Apartments,  according to Isis Casanova, a spokesperson for the New Orleans Health Department. Power remained partially out at Holy Angels apartments and Forest Park Apartments.

“No critical needs” were reported from any of the sites, Casanova said, and health department "strike teams" continued to check on residents at the buildings. All but one independent living facility had power by Friday evening, and Entergy assured City Hall that the last would be brought back online by 8pm.

In Central City, power was restored Thursday evening to the Guste High Rise Apartments, which is operated by the Housing Authority of New Orleans for senior citizens.

Joyce Stokes-Cooper, one of the residents, said she was grateful as temperatures began climbing back to the high 80s. She said the elderly community there suffer when there is no power.

City Council member JP Morrell, who is chair of the Utilities, Cable, Telecommunications and Technology Committee, called a meeting for Monday to discuss the performance of the utilities companies during the storm. The City Council regulates Entergy New Orleans.

"We weathered this storm well due to its low intensity and some critical steps taken to prepare," Morrell said Thursday in a news release. However, he added, the utilities need to communicate better with customers about outages and restoration during storms.

"We can’t afford to play defense against a life-changing storm," he said.

Entergy is still looking for City Council approval to spend about $200 million to harden the city's grid infrastructure after the damage of earlier storms. Last month, Entergy Louisiana, which is regulated by the Public Service Commission, began spending $1.9 billion to upgrade infrastructure in the rest of the state.

Those costs are passed onto ratepayers as additions to monthly bills.

Black Hawk down the Bayou

Entergy's Bourg said the utility was using every tool at its disposal to restore power even as it dealt with what she called the "extreme challenges" of Louisiana's geography.

"Distribution poles can be found in and around marshes, swamp rivers, heavily wooded areas and a variety of hard to reach locations," Bourg said. "Yesterday, we even deployed a Black Hawk helicopter carrying a grapple hook, which specialized operators are using to lift trees off transmission lines."

As of Friday morning, Entergy said it had identified 258 damaged or broken wooden poles, 474 spans of downed wire and 63 blown transformers.

Meanwhile, Cleco Power, which serves customers in St. Tammany, Washington and St. Mary parishes, said it had restored all but about 3,000 of the 37,000 customers who lost power as of late afternoon Friday, with the majority of the remaining outages in St. Mary.

Clint Robichaux, director of operations, said full power restoration in St. Tammany and Washington parishes is expected by end of the day Friday, and customers in St. Mary Parish will be restored by Saturday.

There were still about 4,000 primarily northshore customers of two cooperatives, Dixie Electric and Washington St. Tammany Electric, still without power on Friday morning. Estimated restoration times weren't immediately available.

Staff writer Sophie Kasakove contributed to this report.