Entergy outages top 1-mil from Katrina, Southern at 886,000

Birmingham, Alabama (Platts)--30Aug2005

Entergy Corp early Tuesday reported that 791,000 of its customers are
without power in Louisiana and another 300,000 customers do not have power in
Mississippi.
     The company knows of 107 transmission lines down and 126 transmission
substations out of service. It plans to begin helicopter flyovers this morning
to start assessing infrastructure damage. 
     About 4,000 workers began repairing the system Tuesday morning. An
Entergy spokesman confirmed that some of the lines down in the floodwaters of 
New Orleans are still hot, making repair work more difficult.  
     Meanwhile, on the Southern Company system, all 195,000 Mississippi Power
customers are out of power as of 7 am CDT, officials said. 
     "Mississippi Power has suffered the worst catastrophe in our company's
history," Anthony Topazi, Mississippi Power's president and CEO said this
morning. Topazi expects the company to have an initial assessment later today
of how long it will take to return service to customers. 
     Alabama Power has 631,821 customers without power at 7 am CDT, down from
634,654 at 5 am. Gulf Power now has 60,000 customers without power, down from
100,000 last night.

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