JACKSON, Miss. ( WJTV ) – Crews are working to cleanup debris and damage across Mississippi after Francine moved through the area.

Entergy Mississippi crews worked to address thousands of outages in their service area. The Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) also dispatched hundreds of crews to different locations across the state.

“If you are out on the road today, just remember to always proceed with caution, though the roadways are open. Just always be on the lookout for any flooded roadways and any debris that may be in your way. And just use extreme caution,” said Anna Ehrgott, public information officer for MDOT.

Almost half of the outages in Central Mississippi have been between Rankin and Madison counties, but Hinds County is no exception. Rural areas are likely to see the most outages.

“You know, we are dealing with the drought of last summer, you know, and so there’s a lot of dead trees. We can trees or drought-stricken. And so limbs are falling,” said Haley Fisackerly, CEO for Entergy Mississippi.

As of 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, the storm has caused approximately 11,000 customers to lose power in our service area. Crews have worked as quickly and safely as possible to restore power to 6,500 customers.

Damage assessments are ongoing and as of 4:30 p.m., most customers who can safely receive power are expected to have theirs restored by Thursday night, with some customers expected to be restored Friday.

Officials said they’re relieved to know the damage was not as extreme as they thought.

“We expected a lot worse impacts than we received from Francine. And we had hundreds of workers assigned to respond to this event in the southern and central portion of the state,” said said said Ehrgott.

Once power has been restored in Mississippi, Entergy crews will travel to Louisiana to help customers in need.

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