NATCHEZ &045; Entergy crews worked furiously Monday and Tuesday to restore power to Southwest Mississippi.

And then the power went out &045; again.

All of Adams County was hit by a power outage between about 5:30 and 7 p.m. when a main transmission line was overloaded. Concordia Parish &045; and much of northeast Louisiana &045;was left without power until about 8 p.m., when Entergy restored power, Vidalia Mayor Hyram Copeland said.

There are five lines of transmission going from Louisiana into Mississippi. Four were down because of Katrina and the fifth went down Tuesday afternoon, plunging the Miss-Lou into darkness.

&uot;We’re not sure what happened to lose the transmission,&uot; Customer Service Representative Stephen Caruthers said. &uot;We hope that continues to hold. I’m saying that we should have the majority of customers with power by the end of the week. We took a big step back a while ago (with the outage).&uot;

The outage Tuesday evening was the first major one to hit the parish in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Copeland said Entergy told him a major transmission line in north Louisiana had gone down, taking power away from a large swath of the area. Vidalia, Ferriday and parts of Jonesville, La. were all involved in the blackout.

The exact number of Entergy customers still without power Tuesday due to hurricane-related storms was hard to come by.

But outages still covered almost all of south Mississippi, including half of Entergy’s Natchez customers, Caruthers said.

Crews had gotten power to many business corridors by noon Tuesday, including downtown and John R. Junkin Drive. Residential customers shouldn’t expect power to their homes before the end of this week, Caruthers said.

Still, Adams County residents are the lucky ones. &uot;Everything in south Mississippi is dark but Natchez,&uot; he said.

It’s still not known when customers of the Southwest Mississippi Electric Power Association, including those in unincorporated Adams County, could expect power.

SWMEPA crews and three contract crews were busy Tuesday repairing any power poles and lines they would find, said the association’s Azalea Knight.

&uot;But until Entergy’s transmission lines to our substations are repaired &045; and that haven’t said when that will be &045; we won’t have a good idea of what damage has been done to our system or when they can expect power restored,&uot; she said.

Virtually SWMEPA’s entire customer base is without power &045; in all, 24,962 customers, Knight said.

That association serves customers in Adams, Amite, Claiborne, Copiah, Lincoln, Wilkinson, Jefferson, Hinds and Franklin counties.

BellSouth had 29 telephone outages in Adams County and 190,000 statewide as of Monday evening, but representatives of BellSouth could not be reached for updates as of Tuesday afternoon.

Neither Natchez Waterworks nor the Adams County Water Association, the latter of which is working with the help of four large generators, have or anticipate boil water notices.