The roof of LSU’s indoor football practice field was among the damage caused by overnight storms that moved through Louisiana, knocking down trees and cutting electricity to thousands of people around the state.
There also was roof damage to other buildings on campus. Minor fence damage was reported at the new Alex Box Stadium. And at Tiger Field, where the women’s softball team plays, a game was canceled because of storm damage. Also, car windows were blown out at a women’s dormitory. “They were saying it looks like Gustav on the LSU campus,” says David Latona, a spokesman for DEMCO.
The damage wasn’t confined just to LSU. There were traffic lights out along Perkins Road, blown-out office windows on Corporate Boulevard (see a picture of the damage here) and large trees down in Southdowns. Mayor Kip Holden signed an emergency declaration and says the city-parish Department of Public Works was working with Entergy to restore power. As of about 2:30 p.m., there were 3,900 Entergy customers in metro Baton Rouge without power, says Jeff Holeman, a spokesman for the utility company. That’s down from about 14,000 as of 2:45 a.m. today. The outages were spread across a wide area. “We’re talking about downed lines going into neighborhoods and houses,” Holeman says.
As of around 1 p.m. today, DEMCO reported around 350 customers with outages (down from 9,000 earlier), most of them in Livingston Parish. Latona says the plan is to have power back for everyone by the afternoon. The storms dumped heavy rains in a short period around parts of the state. Alexandria and Lafayette had more than two inches for the 24-hour period that ended at 7 a.m.; almost two inches fell in the Bayou Sorrel area in Iberville Parish and well over an inch in the Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and New Orleans areas.
