Francine knocks out power to over 250,000 Louisiana customers

(Reuters) -Over 250,000 homes and businesses in Louisiana were without power on Thursday after Hurricane Francine barreled onto the state's Gulf Coast, according to data from PowerOutage.us.

Francine weakened to a post-tropical cyclone earlier in the day, but not before it had pounded southeast Louisiana, southern Mississippi and Alabama with heavy rains and gusty winds.

The utility company with the largest number of customers affected was Entergy, which had 209,288 clients without power.

"We have started restoring service to our customers where it is safe to do so and assessing damage to our system caused by Francine," Entergy said in a statement on Thursday.

It was followed by Dixie Electric Membership Corporation, with 19,360 customers cut off in the state.

Here are the major outages by utility in Louisiana:

Power Companies Outages

Entergy

209,288

Dixie Electric Membership Corporation

19,360

Cleco Power

14,851

Washington St. Tammany Electric Cooperative 7,087

Total

250,727

(Reporting by Anjana Anil and Anmol Choubey in BengaluruEditing by Alistair Bell and Sandra Maler)