Power still out for thousands in St. Mary Parish, may be back up by Sunday

ST. MARY PARISH, La. (KLFY) — Thousands remain without power on the second morning after Hurricane Francine tore through the area, and many of them will remain so until Sunday.

As of 8 a.m. Friday, 4,777 customers in St. Mary Parish were without power, According to the PowerOutage.us map. Statewide, over 125,000 customers are still in the dark after the storm.

Clint Robichaux, director of distribution operations and reliability for Cleco, the electricity provider for St. Mary Parish and others, said the utility found 67 broken poles and 390 spans of downed wire in its post-storm surveys.

“Now that most of the impacted areas have been assessed for damage, we are able to offer additional estimated times for power restoration,” said Robichaux. “We expect full power restoration in St. Tammany and Washington parishes by Saturday, and customers in St. Mary Parish will be restored by Sunday.”

Robichaux said the company has over 1,700 contractors working to clear debris, make system and equipment repairs and restore power.

“We are proud of our crews, and are still hard at work to restore power to our remaining customers,” he said.