Hurricane Ida left more than one million customers without power after the Category 4 hurricane made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, Inside Towers reports. Entergy, New Orleans’ power provider, reported “catastrophic damage” to its transmission and said that all 400,000 of its customers in Orleans Parish were without power, per U.S. News & World Report.
The White House said earlier this week that more than 3,600 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees had been deployed, and 17 urban search and rescue teams as well as hundreds of air and ground ambulances had been staged. The agency also deployed more than 3.4 million meals.
The hurricane has also impacted cell service in Louisiana. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deployed personnel in preparation for the storm. FCC personnel is on the ground to assess post-landfall impact to the area’s communications networks and help restore service as quickly as possible. The Commission is working with FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security and other government organizations. It also coordinated with industry on emergency preparedness and pre-positioned life-saving communications equipment.
50% of sites in Louisiana out
The initial Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) report for was released on August 30 and the FCC said approximately 30% of cell sites in impacted areas of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi were out of service as of 11 a.m. Eastern. Louisiana experienced the most cell outages—with more than 50% of impact sites; 1,437 out of 2,759, Inside Towers reports. Most had no power at all, while the remainder reported data transport issues or damage, according to DIRS. The Assumption and Terrebonne parishes had the most outages (100% each), while 89% of Plaquemines’ sites were down.
Additionally, cable and wireline companies reported that more than 300,000 Louisiana subscribers were without service. Service loss could include telephone, TV, Internet service or any combination of the three. Meanwhile, 16,000 customers in Mississippi lost service and just 478 people in Alabama did. Louisiana’s Orleans Parish and St. John Parish Sheriff’s Office re-routed 911 calls to another 911 call center with location information.
None of the 911 call centers in Alabama or Mississippi were reported to be impacted. Meanwhile, two television stations reported being off the air, along with three FM stations and two AM’s.
Joe Dyton can be reached at joed@fifthgenmedia.
