Isaac causes significant damage to New Orleans utility

Entergy Hurricane Isaac Outages saw 769,458 customers affected, with storm restoration crews battling flooding, downed trees, and road closures across Louisiana and Mississippi, as damaged transmission lines and substations hampered power restoration efforts.

Hurricane Isaac knocked out power to more than 769,000 Entergy utility customers recently as the slow-moving storm continued wreaking havoc on its path through Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas.

At its peak, Isaac left 769,458 customers without power, making it the fourth-most damaging storm in Entergy history in terms of outages. The only storms with larger customer impacts have been Katrina power outages with 1.1 million affected customers, Gustav power cuts with 964,000 and Rita with 800,000.

A storm team of more than 12,000 led power restoration, overcoming significant challenges from flooding and downed trees blocking access to storm-damaged areas. In addition, road closures and heavy traffic made it difficult to move crews to where damage is heaviest.

"Isaac stuck around longer than anyone wanted and continues to cause significant challenges as we work to restore power as quickly and as safely as possible," said Greg Grillo, Entergy's incident storm commander.

As of press time, a total of 30 transmission substations were out in Louisiana and Mississippi, underscoring strain on the Louisiana power grid statewide. In addition, the number of damaged transmission lines included one in Entergy Arkansas, 13 in Entergy Mississippi, 34 in Entergy Louisiana, three in Entergy New Orleans, a city that has faced New Orleans power failures during major storms, and 12 in Entergy Gulf States Louisiana. No Entergy fossil or nuclear power plants were damaged by the storm.

Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations.

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