Louisiana power outages renew questions about utility giant’s preparedness for storms

As Ida lashed Louisiana, New Orleans’ rehabilitated levees stood firm, preventing the kind of extreme flooding that made Hurricane Katrina so devastating. But the rain and winds caused widespread damage to the region’s power grid, leaving more than 1 million without power. Entergy, which serves the vast majority of customers who lost electricity, said Monday that restoring power to the entire region could take weeks because the storm knocked out all eight transmission lines bringing electricity from power plants into New Orleans.