Electric companies still working to resolve hurricane power outages

Published 1:35 pm Sunday, October 11, 2020

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NATCHEZ — Thousands of Southwest Mississippi residents are without electric power today and many are expected to be without power for several days as a result of Hurricane Delta which came through the area on Friday and Saturday.

The storm took out trees, tree limbs and power lines as it moved through the area and electric companies are still working to resolve power outages after Hurricane Delta.

At 1 p.m. Sunday, approximately 1,500 Entergy customers and some 3,500 or 61% of Southwest Electric’s customers in Adams County were still without power according to the respective companies’ websites.

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Entergy’s website shows power outages scattered in different parts of Natchez and on U.S. 61 North in Washington.

Officials of Southwest Electric announced on their social media page Sunday morning that they have 17,643 meters without power within their service area, which includes 25,000 meters in nine counties in Southwest Mississippi.

Affected areas of Adams County served by Southwest Electric include Dunbar Road, Eagles Nest Road, Kingston Road, Beau Pré, Broadmoor, Magnolia Acres Road, Washington and Kaiser Lake.

Perhaps the largest concentration of Southwest’s outages are in the U.S. 61 South area between Beau Pré and Kingston Road, said Kevin Bonds, CEO of Southwest Electric.

“We have a large concentration (of outages) on 61 south in the Kingston area,” Bonds said. “We are making some progress in the Kingston area to the Highway 61 South area that we serve. North of town in the Washington area toward Kaiser Lake. We actually had Cranfield back on but it is back out for some reason. We have some people out patrolling that now. Those are our largest outages.”

Bonds said the crews’ main mission Sunday is to work on a three phase line in the Kingston area that serves a large segment of customers in the U.S. 61 corridor of Adams County.

“We’ve got a broken pole on Kingston Road right off 61,” Bonds said. “If we could get that restored, and we have another broken pole across from Kingston on 61. That would actually get us able to feed the 61 corridor. Those are our goals for the day.”

In addition, Bonds said Church Hill had five power lines down and crews are working on that area.

“We’ve got crews out there restoring that now but it is going to be a long process,” Bonds said.

“Crews from Coast Electric Power Association, Dixie Electric Power Association and East Mississippi Electric Power Association have arrived and are working alongside our crews,” Southwest officials announced on social media Sunday. “… We have 17,643 meters without power. We have not seen outage numbers like this since Katrina. This is going to take several days.”

Tim Runnels, a spokesperson for Entergy, said power may be fully restored for all Adams County customers by 10 p.m. Tuesday or sooner.

“We’ll have all but 587 customers restored (Sunday night.) We’ve been chipping away at the mountain, as they say,” Runnels said. “Given the size of this storm and the damage, it’s not uncommon for it to take several days to get power restored but we are making progress. … When you get to the end you wind up with isolated customers who have damage scattered throughout the county. Tuesday at 10 p.m. or sooner, we hope to have all of those customers back on.”

Scott Hawkins contributed to this report.