Power outages in New Orleans ahead of Francine’s landfall | Hurricane Center

Power was restored to thousands of New Orleans residents Tuesday evening after a major outage a day before Hurricane Francine was forecast to make landfall.

Entergy’s outage map showed that as of 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, a large portion of New Orleans was without power, including parts of Bywater, Marigny and the Seventh Ward.

An Entergy spokesperson said about 9,000 customers were affected by the outage and that power was restored around 8:55 p.m. The cause of the outage is still under investigation, but initial findings indicate it was caused by a circuit breaker failure.

The outages occurred one day before Hurricane Francine is expected to make landfall in Louisiana as a Category 1 hurricane.

New Orleans City Councilman Joe Giarusso, who helped craft New Orleans’ energy policy, said the council met with Entergy on Monday to ensure clear communication with residents during the storm.

“We spoke with Entergy yesterday about the need to clearly communicate to residents what was happening and why it was happening,” Giarusso said in a text message. “We expected this to happen.”

In a press release on Tuesday, the company said 1,600 employees and contractors were on the ground in Louisiana to prepare for Hurricane Francine, and another 3,400 emergency personnel had been requested to assist in the aftermath of the storm.

“As with any storm that threatens our service area, we are taking Tropical Storm Francine very seriously and have activated our methodical storm response process,” Steven Benyard, vice president of reliability for Entergy in Louisiana, said in a statement.

The company urged its 1.3 million customers to take precautions ahead of the storm and to stay in touch with Entergy through social media, the app and text message alerts for regular updates on outages and restoration times.

New Orleans has seen an increase in power outages this year, often affecting thousands of customers at once outside of major hurricanes and storms.

The company has come under increasing scrutiny from residents and regulators alike. The New Orleans City Council, which regulates Entergy New Orleans, sharply criticized the company at a hearing earlier this year for the lack of reliability of its power grid and is considering toughening standards for the company.

This is a developing story. Check back later for updates.