Francine Aftermath: Update on Power Outages

That we're also continuing to keep track of power outages throughout the area, keeping you up to speed with energy and the grid that showed some 200,000 people without power. But they've made lots of progress overnight. Officials from energy just held a conference call with reporters, Rachel Hanley was on that call, joins us now from the Wwl Louisiana help desk to fill us in there. So what's energy saying? Well, we haven't gotten a lot of specifics on restoration times yet on the main message that they had on this call that II I just got off of this maybe a minute ago. So I'm still kind of gathering my, gather my notes here. Um But their main point was that in the New Orleans area, they are starting the restoration process. Now they say they've moved their um their resources from staging areas to actually going out and doing things. And so they wanted people to know so that they know to be careful on roads as these trucks and as these workers and the first responders who may be accompanying them are going out. So that was a big one. They also talked about um who was the hardest hit. And they also, um kind of speculated on some of the reasons that the power outages were so bad during this storm, um, for the hardest hit ones. And we, we already knew this, I mean, Trebon and Lafoe parishes as of right now, more than 20,000 with power in terror and more than 30,000 in LA. I asked them specifically about Teron and LA to see if they had any, even just vague timelines for, for a restoration update. Is this going to be like Ida where some places are out of power for almost a month or is it going to be more like, you know, a standard thunderstorm power outage? And they said, and they really, really stressed that this is not a specific timeline for this storm is just generally what they say in these scenarios. They say a category one hurricane, they usually tell people up to a week and they'll say seven plus days for a category two. So that's the very, very rough timeline. They say we could be looking at at this point, but they said in those areas, there are complications to trying to assess these things. It's not always a matter of just going up to, you know, a transmission line and being able to see exactly what's going on. There are areas there are places where equipment has a hard time getting to. So they're just starting all of those assessments now that the storm has passed. So again, we got some updates on this call, but we are still waiting to hear more specifics on. They also talked about vegetation a lot. They said that that seems to be a main driver of these outages rather than transmission failures. So down trees and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. They, they said that, um, the, the recent drought probably made this problem worse and they stress that even, you know, a, a small twig or like two small sticks can, uh, in a situation like this cause problems. And so they said that vegetation so far in their preliminary assessments, uh, seems to be a main driver of all of these outages. Um, so that's another thing that's complicating the, yeah, complicating the process us of getting all this back together. Um, couple more things, uh, for people to know. They said that if you see any kind of down power line or any kind of electrical equipment that you think could be a hazard to report it to 1 800 energy. And we have been showing you again pictures from the area all morning. And in a few of those, we have seen some pieces of electrical equipment on the ground. So we know that some of you out there are seeing it. So 1 800 energy is where you're supposed to report that they also said, and I thought this was, uh, I thought this was interesting. It's not something we normally talk about in the wake of this. But they said, uh, scams and attempted scams go up a lot after outages. They say most commonly people will, um, call people or show up to their door and say, hey, I can restore your power for X amount of money. Um, and they pay them the money and then they don't do anything, of course. And they really, really wanted to stress that they are never going to ask you for money for a weather related outage to fix a weather related outage. So they said also if you suspect that somebody out there is trying to scam you with something power outage related, you can report that to 1 800 G two. So that's kind of the, the, the catch all line for uh problem like this. Yeah. And you know what we did hear from um Councilwoman at large, Jennifer Van Franken and JP who has a number of power outages. She said she also spoke with energy just before that call and they did emphasize kind of what you're saying that they're also prioritizing not just the locations, but also some of the more important buildings and infrastructures within those locations. So that might also add to time because say for like restoring a hospital that's gonna take a bit more time that it a single home or, or a street of homes. So that's sort of the process. I know that they're, they're following. But it's, and energy had even mentioned hospitals specifically as being one of their priorities and pumping stations, just any kind of critical infrastructure that people rely on. They also said that they are prioritizing um any kind of repairs that will bring power back to as many people as possible. So that's something to know if you live on, you know, a small rural street where maybe you're one of only a few households on your uh you know, nearby electrical system that might mean that your power is restored slower as opposed to somebody on a, you know, a busy city block. And Rachel again, the number stands right now at 272,064 customers affected uh within the state of Louisiana according to energy. I wanna ask you this and you may not have the answer just yet because as you mentioned, you just got back from that call that started a little after nine. So you're giving us just the information that you got as you get it, you're still gathering a lot of the details there but says that it seems as though most of the uh the culprit here would be vegetation, trees, falling, whatnot. But one of the concerns we see in communities such as for instance, Terreon in parish, the grid there in Houma, the infrastructure there in Houma is still being repaired, damage from hurricane IDA. And so energy is providing some of the power from, from the New Orleans area. And, and, and so, while they say vegetation is uh the primary uh culprit here, have they said anything about the status of, for instance, the system in Terrebonne Parish, which already had damage and they were working to resolve their, did they talk about any of that? No. Um that wasn't really addressed. And uh with the format of this call, we were, um I was able to ask two questions, um, and then they, and the question period, but they did say, uh one of my questions was, uh, how often are you gonna provide these updates? And they said that they will keep doing these types of updates in some form as they, uh you know, continue the process of restoration. So I think that's, that's a great question and I do think that it's something we should um, press them on as this moves forward. So what she's saying is write it down and make a right. Right. Right. We thank you for that and, and, and for the record, Rachel is running back and forth to and from the news. She hasn't been in that seat long. She goes back and forth. So we do appreciate that. We know you jumped off that call and we're just trying to reverb everything you were thinking of, but, you know, we took notes and I got a whole page here. So, really good information. Thank you so much. And I asked that question, you know, not to, not to offer any criticism, that's not our responsibility to do so as we say, thank you to Rachel, but to get to more of a.