Ida Inflicts ‘Catastrophic’ Damage To New Orleans Power Grid — Residents Told To Prep For 6 Weeks In The Dark

Ida Inflicts ‘Catastrophic’ Damage To New Orleans Power Grid — Residents Told To Prep For 6 Weeks In The Dark

Downed lines in Metairie, La. are a common site the morning after Ida. The day after Hurricane Ida barreled through the region with 150-mph, winds, the people of New Orleans and Louisiana's coastal parishes are facing the prospect of weeks with electricity and air conditioning. Cat 4 Ida inflicted what power company Entergy ETR refers to as "catastrophic transmission damage" as thousands of trees and power poles have been felled across 10 parishes. More than 750, 000 customers are without power, and have been warned of "extended power outages" that in outlying parishes could last six weeks. The most dramatic power grid destruction involved the crumpling of towers that used to suspend high-voltage lines over the Mississippi River. According to parish emergency managers, all traffic on the river has been halted until crews can fish the lines out of the river. Analysts at Goldman Sachs GS this morning recalled that the last time Entergy got walloped by a hurricane the cost to ratepayers was in excess of $2 billion. There were scattered reports of breached levees in southern parishes, but none so far in New Orleans proper, or the Lower Ninth Ward district that was so decimated by flooding following