Though most people in East Baton Rouge Parish were lucky enough either not to have lost power throughout Isaac or to have had electricity restored after about a day without it, there are approximately 52,000 Entergy and DEMCO customers in the parish who are still waiting for their lights, appliances and air conditioning to return to life.
Among Entergy customers, 47,500 remain without power in the parish—which is about 37,000 fewer than were powerless Thursday morning. DEMCO, meanwhile, reports 13% of its 32,200 East Baton Rouge Parish customers, or about 4,360, are still without power.
“We will see those numbers go down some today, and that’s a good thing, but it’s still a long road to home,” says DEMCO spokesman David Latona. “For the most part, we’re talking about days rather than hours.”
Latona says restoring electricity in East Baton Rouge Parish has been easier for DEMCO than it has been in Ascension and Livingston parishes, where flooding continues to hamper efforts.
As of this morning, about 15,100 of DEMCO customers in Livingston Parish lacked power. In Ascension, 3,540 were in the same boat. Entergy reports this morning having approximately 10,500 outages in Livingston and another 9,000 in Ascension.
Entergy spokeswoman Sheila Pounders says progress in restoring residential service should continue to increase throughout today.
“Yesterday, we were really doing a lot of assessing and repairing of the big backbone feeder lines, as well as focusing on large infrastructure,” Pounders explains. “Today, we’re starting to really focus on those residential restorations that remain.”
Neither DEMCO nor Entergy is giving a hard timeline on complete restorations as of this morning.
“Right now, I can tell you 90% of our customers statewide should be restored by Thursday [Sept. 6],” Pounders says. “Now, when I break it down to the Capital Region area, we are going to beat that date. I really can’t tell you it’s going to be Tuesday or Wednesday at this point, but we are going to beat that date.”
Across Louisiana, Entergy reports 526,300 customers are without power as of this morning. See Entergy’s outage map here, and DEMCO’s outage map here.
