Louisiana's capital city region could go three weeks before electricity is completely restored because Hurricane Gustav mowed down so many transmission towers, a state utility regulator said Thursday.
After a helicopter trip over the Baton Rouge area, Public Service Commissioner Jimmy Field said the storm knocked down 20 of the area's transmission towers that follow the Mississippi River along the 80 miles between New Orleans and the capital.
"This was a perfect storm, if you wanted to destroy as much of the generation and the transmission alley that we have," Field said.
Entergy Corp., the region's top power company, agreed with Field's prediction about the Baton Rouge. By contrast, the company predicted that power would be fully restored in New Orleans on Monday.
About 76 percent of power customers were without electricity in East Baton Rouge Parish, which includes the capital city, down from 90 percent the previous day, according to figures provided by the state late Thursday. The parish has a population of about 430,000.
Entergy said the region has never suffered damage as severe as Gustav's. The last storm that came close was Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Earlier this week, Co-op Dixie Electric Membership Corp. of Baton Rouge reported all 95,000 of its members were without power. The last time that happened: 1992.
The post-Gustav power situation is far worse in Baton Rouge than in New Orleans, said Renae Conley, president and chief executive of Entergy Louisiana and Entergy Gulf States Louisiana.
"It is pretty devastating to see the amount of transmission damage for the state," she said.
Along with transmission problems, trees are down and power poles have been snapped in two. Utilities, hindered by torrential rains and the threats of tornadoes until the weather began to improve Thursday, must negotiate hills, woods and swamps to get power restored.
Gov. Bobby Jindal has said the projected timeline for restoring power is unacceptable.
"One of the things that absolutely has to be worked out is what more could be done to harden the lines and make the distribution system more safe for future storms or intentional acts, whether it's additional redundancies or a hardening of the assets," he said Thursday.
He said getting the power restored is key to getting the state's hard-hit communities back on their feet.
"If we do have full power, it lessens the need to evacuate patients out of hospitals and nursing homes," he said. "If we do have full power, it lessens the need to have to go and buy generators and try to stand up fuel stations, grocery stores and pharmacies. "
The Department of Energy said Thursday morning that 1 million customers are without power, including 925,963 in Louisiana. That is down nearly 200,000 customers from Wednesday afternoon.
Statewide, Entergy reported 561,082 customers without power Thursday afternoon, down from a peak of 850,000 Tuesday morning and the second most in the utility's 95-year history _ trailing only Katrina in 2005, when the utility had 1.1 million outages. Entergy said most customers in Arkansas should have power back by the end of Friday.
Cleco Co. was reporting 128,798 outages Thursday morning, below 50 percent of its total customer base, and said it expects to have power to all of its customers who can take it by Tuesday.
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Associated Press writer Melinda Deslatte contributed to this report.
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