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NATCHEZ — Approximately 1,200 Entergy customers lost power on Monday afternoon on U.S. 61 and surrounding neighborhoods, including Merit Health Natchez Hospital.

Tim Runnels, Entergy customer service representative, confirmed Monday that the hospital temporarily lost power as did many others at approximately 1:45 p.m. Monday.

Power was restored to the hospital first within an hour after the outage and Entergy crews were still working to restore power to all of their customers Monday afternoon, Runnels said.

“We have 926 customers still out and very soon we’ll have 654 back on,” Runnels said at approximately 4 p.m. Monday. “The rest of our customers should be back on between 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. tonight.”

Runnels said approximately 1,200 customers between Liberty Road and the hospital and the neighborhood around Melrose Montebello Parkway lost power while Entergy performed routine maintenance on Monday.

“We were doing routine maintenance when a switch burned up and a wire burned down with it right outside of our substation,” Runnels said. “That didn’t leave us many options to get customers’ power back on quickly.”

Runnels said a fallen tree had damaged some Entergy equipment last week and work was being done to repair the damages in anticipation of tropical storms projected to be coming through the area.

“We will continue to do routine maintenance today and (Tuesday) if weather permits so hopefully not as many customers will lose power during the storm,” Runnels said. “We prepare for inclement weather long before it gets here and we bring outside crews to do it. Whatever happens, we’re prepared.”