METAIRIE, La. — Homes and vehicles damaged in Tropical Storm Olga's overnight landfall meant an early wake-up for power crews and people with damaged property.
Downed trees and broken power lines and poles left tens of thousands in Southeast Louisiana without power. Power companies are continuing to work to restore service to many areas Saturday night, and say power for some locations will not be back on until Sunday or Monday.
Da’Monte Thomas in Covington woke up to a big boom early Saturday morning. A tree had fallen outside his home, crashing into his grandmother’s car and wrapping a power line around his own.
“That tree needed to be cut down anyway,” said Thomas. “I guess it was a matter of time and today was a great day for it.”
Mike Hays who also lives in Covington said he was grateful he had bought a generator as much of the city was without power most of the day.
“CLECO has been good about restoring power quickly and nobody has seen a CLECO truck at all today, not in Covington,” said Hays. “Everybody has been kind of surprised that it’s taking a while to get power restored.”
According to CLECO, 200 contractors have been brought in from outside areas to help restore service.
Entergy says 92,000 of their customers experienced an outage due to Olga, a number much higher than they expected.
“We had no clue it was going to be as rough as it was, so we were prepared but the damage came in more than anticipated,” said David Johnson, vice-president of Entergy customer service.
Some streets in Metairie saw downed trees but didn’t lose power.
“It was a jungle out here,” said resident Bob Ward. “But at 8 a.m. it was open, crews did a good job.”