When Hurricane Ida’s catastrophic and damaging winds left more than 900,000 customers without power across southeast Louisiana, Entergy Gas customers in New Orleans and Baton Rouge were able to use an alternative means to power their needs.

“Before a storm comes our way, we assess our gas systems for supply availability and redundancy,” said Tad Patella, Entergy’s director of gas operations. “After Hurricane Ida passed, our customers were able to rely on our gas system without limitations or supply constraints.”

The gas system played a quiet, yet significant role in helping the New Orleans Power Station bring first lights to New Orleans East. Once repairs began on Entergy’s distribution system, NOPS delivered power to light nearly 8,000 residential and critical business customers within three days of Hurricane Ida’s passing.

New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board also was able to self-generate electricity by connecting their generators to Entergy’s gas supply.

The system’s ability to sustain the hurricane was, in part, due to the and the .

“For years, we have systematically invested and successfully executed our infrastructure replacement programs to make our systems more resilient,” Patella continued. “I am proud of the Entergy gas team and of everyone who supported and operated our system to ensure we performed at a premiere level to power customers after Ida.”

Entergy New Orleans began rebuilding its gas system after it was overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters. Since then, most of the company’s low-pressure system has upgraded to a more modern high-pressure system. These upgrades made for better reliability, safety and protection against storms and flooding.

In Baton Rouge, Entergy is continuing to remove aged pipe infrastructure and replace it with modern pipe materials to enhance the safety and reliability of the natural gas system.

The New Orleans gas replacement infrastructure program is expected to be completed by 2026 and the Baton Rouge natural gas infrastructure replacement program is expected to be completed by 2024.

Gas Safety

Customers should always stay alert for natural gas leaks. If you smell gas or hear a blowing or hissing noise, open a window and leave the area immediately. Do not use an open flame, operate electrical switches, use telephones (corded or mobile) or other electronic devices. Call the gas company from a nearby building and don’t re-enter until it’s safe to do so. More gas safety tips are available

Additionally, customers who choose to use a generator should always use portable electric generators in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. Visit Entergy’s webpage for more tips.

BATON ROUGE, La. – Entergy Louisiana customers will soon see a significant drop in their monthly bills. Thirteen years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated much of Louisiana, the low-cost bonds used to save customers hundreds of millions of dollars in storm restoration costs are now paid off.

Starting in August, a legacy Entergy Louisiana residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month will see a reduction of approximately $4.35 in the storm restoration charge on their monthly bill, while a legacy Entergy Gulf States Louisiana residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours will pay about $2.57 less per month.

The cost of restoring power following the storms totaled $966 million with $687.7 million in the legacy Entergy Louisiana service area, which includes the southeast Louisiana and north Louisiana regions, and $278.4 million for the legacy Entergy Gulf States Louisiana service area, which primarily covers from just east of the Baton Rouge metro area west to the Texas line. The companies were combined as Entergy Louisiana in 2015.

The Katrina storm recovery team numbered more than 13,000. It took 42 days to restore power to all customers who could accept it following Katrina. For Rita, a team of more than 17,000 worked three weeks to restore power to all customers in Louisiana and Texas.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused more damage to the company’s distribution system than any other storms in history. The hurricanes damaged more than 21,000 poles, 12,600 distribution transformers, and miles of wire in Entergy Louisiana’s service territory, either due to the intensity of the wind, flying debris, storm surge, or a combination of the three.

To recover costs of the massive restoration effort, Entergy Louisiana used alternative financing in the form of low-interest, long-term bonds provided by the state-created Louisiana Utilities Restoration Corporation to help reduce the financial impact to customers.

“Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were catastrophic events. When we realized the extent of restoration costs, it became one of our top priorities to protect our customers so they wouldn’t see a spike in their bills,” said Phillip May, president and CEO of Entergy Louisiana. “We worked closely with the Louisiana Public Service Commission and other elected officials to put a mechanism in place to secure low-interest bonds that saved our customers hundreds of millions in financing costs.”

While the Katrina/Rita bonds are now repaid, and charges for those storms will no longer be included on customer bills, storm restoration charges for hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Isaac remain. The Gustav/Ike bonds issued in 2010 are expected to be repaid in August 2022, while the bonds issued in 2014 to finance Isaac restoration costs will be repaid in 2026.

“Despite these storm restoration charges, Entergy Louisiana has been able to keep its rates among the lowest in the state and nation,” May said.

Entergy Louisiana, LLC provides electric service to more than 1 million customers and natural gas service to nearly 93,000 customers in the greater Baton Rouge area. With operations in southern, central and northeastern Louisiana, the company is a subsidiary of ���ϳԹ���.

���ϳԹ��� is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including nearly 9,000 megawatts of nuclear power. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.9 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of approximately $11 billion and more than 13,000 employees.

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JACKSON, Mississippi– In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, more than 300,000 Entergy Mississippi customers were in the dark. Power restoration took 11 days, engaged more than 4,200 linemen and support personnel and cost more than $89 million. That bill is now paid in full, and because of that, the $.74 charge will be removed from customer’s bills beginning today.

“Much like Katrina itself, the extent of the damage, and the large price tag on the restoration that came with it, came as a shock to everyone,” said Haley Fisackerly, Entergy Mississippi president and CEO. “Because restoration costs are considered a cost of providing electric service, they are paid for by customers. That’s why we sought a creative way to pay, so our customers would not see a spike in their bills.

That creative payment method involved working closely with elected officials to obtain federal grants and low-interest bonds from the state.

“We also knew that we had to be prepared in case a catastrophic event like this happened again. So we worked to create a storm reserve fund, to be used in the event of another Katrina-type storm.”

Working with Senator Thad Cochran, the company was able to secure a large portion of the costs through a federal Community Development Block Grant.  For the remainder of the costs, Entergy worked closely with then-governor Haley Barbour, then-state treasurer Tate Reeves, the Mississippi legislature, the Mississippi Public Service Commission and the Public Utilities Staff to allow the issuance of low interest bonds through the “Hurricane Katrina Electric Utility Customer Relief and Electric Utility System Restoration Act.” This allowed utilities to spread restoration costs over a longer period of time.

At its peak, Entergy Mississippi saw more than 75 percent of its then-410,000 customers, sitting in the dark. There were 94 transmission line sections down, 98 substations out of service, approximately 2,000 poles down and more than 4,000 cross arms stripped off poles, along with 300 miles of conductor, transformers, arrestors, switches, reclosers, regulators and other equipment destroyed.

“The hard work and dedication of all the people who helped in this unprecedented restoration effort will never be forgotten, and we are forever thankful,” said Fisackerly. “And we also are grateful for the state’s leadership for working so well with us on financing options that made restoration costs manageable for our customers.”

Entergy Mississippi, Inc. provides electricity to approximately 445,000 customers in 45 counties. It is a subsidiary of ���ϳԹ���. ���ϳԹ��� is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including nearly 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.8 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of more than $11.5 billion and more than 13,000 employees.

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But just after arriving in his hometown of Sulphur, La., he found out he would have to get back in the car and leave. Hurricane Rita was coming.

So this former meter services employee – now a senior engineering assistant – evacuated with his family to his brother’s house in Oakdale, La.

As the massive Rita made its way onto land near the Louisiana/Texas border around 2:30 on the morning of Sept. 24, 2005, Coleman couldn’t sleep. In fact, he and his brother-in law, Warren Faulk (Entergy serviceman first class in Lake Charles), headed back to the Lake Charles/Sulphur area around 7:30 a.m. that same day because they wanted to arrive as soon as possible.

When they got to Lake Charles, all the bridges were closed. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that Coleman was able to make it to the company’s staging site at the West Calcasieu Arena – and because he had left so early, he was the first one there.

“It was so chaotic all over the area and hard to get around,” Coleman said. “But our staging site was still there. I waited a couple of hours before our crews safely arrived to get set up for work.”

But arrive they did. Coleman said he spent the first four days after Rita at Lake Charles’ Burton Coliseum helping with logistics at the staging site there. After that, he was asked to head into the field where he spent the next few weeks assisting with restoration.

“I worked with Harvey Ancelet (also an Entergy serviceman first class in Lake Charles who has since retired) the rest of the time and helped him and his crew with running lines and re-fusing line fuses,” Coleman said. “We were working with crews out of Oklahoma and were instrumental in restoring power to the Westlake-Maplewood area between Lake Charles and Sulphur.”

Coleman described returning from the devastation of Katrina to face the destruction Rita did to southwest Louisiana as surreal. But, he said, it was a true learning experience.

“I wasn’t expecting the kind of damage we got – I never expected the total devastation I had just seen from Katrina to happen at home,” he added. “And the hardest part was the effect I knew it would have on my two young girls.”

Coleman’s daughters – then one and five years old – were safely away with his wife, but because their Sulphur home was destroyed, he knew their lives wouldn’t be the same when they returned.

“The hardest part of the entire experience for me was when I had to call my wife and let her know the bad news about our home,” he said. “And because there wasn’t much left that was able to be saved, I knew it would be hard on our kids.”

But there was a silver lining. Coleman was able to save a few of his daughters’ toys and was able to rebuild thanks to the help of his family – his Entergy family.

“I couldn’t have gotten through it all without the support of my family here at Entergy,” he said. “Their help when it came time to rebuild my home was a gift from God – I didn’t have to worry at all. I am truly lucky to have family and friends like I do here at Entergy.”

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On Friday, Aug. 28, one day before the 10^th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall along the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, Chairman and CEO Leo Denault .

This was never clearer than in the days after Hurricane Katrina when people couldn’t come home, schools and grocery stores couldn’t open, gas stations couldn’t run – nothing could happen until the power came back on.

It’s been 10 years but who could ever forget … the city we love was submerged under water; the Gulf Coast lay ravaged by wind and water.�� All in, roughly 90,000 square miles��of the Gulf Coast were devastated and many people lost their lives.

For Entergy, 1.1 million customers were impacted, power plants were knocked off-line, and countless transmission and distribution lines fell down across the Gulf South. Fully one-third of Entergy’s service territory was affected by Hurricane Katrina.

In a story familiar to those that live here, thousands of our employees worked through the storm, and after the storm, while they too lost their homes and communities to the storm.

In the days during Katrina, and certainly in the weeks and months afterwards, the city of New Orleans and its people suffered a kind of horror that few other cities ever have – or ever will.��

But we rose to the challenge and came back stronger.��

Since Hurricane Katrina, Entergy has invested over $1 billion upgrading plants and substations, and nearly $300 million hardening transmission and distribution systems. Many of our transmission lines, for example, can now withstand winds up to 150 miles per hour.�� And more improvements are on the way.

The New Orleans City Council recognizes that getting businesses and residents back up and running is vital to the local economy. Just this year, the council approved nearly $99 million in securitization financing – a portion of which was used to establish a fully funded electric storm reserve of $75 million that will provide Entergy New Orleans with a ready source of cash available for restoration following a major storm. In addition, there also is just under $6 million in a gas storm-reserve fund.��

Entergy has also invested $37 million in community efforts, to create a stronger, more prosperous and sustainable Gulf Coast region.

We were not alone in doing so: over the past decade, hundreds of businesses and individuals, non-profits and universities, all committed time, money and resources – such as the ��to rethink New Orleans’ levy system – so that the Gulf Coast would not only recover, but come back stronger.

The dedication and commitment paid off – and what a transformation it’s been.��

Today, New Orleans is growing – both our population and our economy. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, we became, for the first time since Katrina hit, one of the country’s 50 largest cities.�� Our schools have transformed: New Orleans is today a hub for innovation in education.�� More of our kids are learning, graduating – and succeeding. ��I am privileged to get a front row seat in the educational transformation as a Board member for KIPP New Orleans.��

We are also becoming a technology hub, and the city is expecting thousands of new tech jobs over the next decade.�� And, due to the influx of college graduates, Forbes magazine recently ranked New Orleans as the #1 Brainpower City in the country.�� Although we have retained our rich cultural heritage in music and art, this is a far cry from the “The City that Time Forgot” of 10 years ago!��

Recovering from one of the nation’s costliest natural disaster in history continues, even 10 years later. But, today, the Gulf Coast region is one of the great comeback stories in recent memory. The resilience and unwavering spirit of the people who lost so much is nothing short of inspiring.

��

Days before she hit, we were preparing the storm room when we realized Hurricane Katrina was going to hit the Mississippi or Louisiana coast. It was a sobering moment.

Monday, Aug. 29—tracking the hurricane’s path, we watched outages mount, shell-shocked by the devastation. In that single day, 300,000 of our 410,000 customers lost power.��

I was vice president of customer operations then, assigned to work with customer service, local officials, our communications team and crucial logistical needs. I was one cog in a well-oiled machine set in motion before Katrina’s landfall that ensured power would be restored. But what we learned with Katrina was that no matter what your planned role was, everything changed. We did whatever it took to rebuild an electrical infrastructure that had taken 80 years to create.

I was inspired by the way our employees set aside their personal losses to stand tall in their jobs, and at how retirees reported back to work, knowing they would be needed. One story of grit and determination particularly stands out.

A few days after the storm, the fuel crisis hit. People lined up at gas stations. Fights broke out.

The City of Jackson prepared for possible riots. Our trucks were on the verge of running out of fuel, too. The gasoline supply was tight because virtually all electricity in Collins was out. Collins is a major hub for piping fuel from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast. This put a major constraint on gasoline to the Mid-South, and was starting to impact the eastern seaboard. The Department of ���ϳԹ��� and FEMA were concerned about fuel supplies to the rest of the country. We all needed that fuel. People’s lives were depending on it, and the U.S. economy would come to a halt if we didn’t do something to get the fuel moving.

We don’t serve Collins. Southern Pine Electric Power Association and Mississippi Power Company, which had 100 percent destruction, do. Mississippi Power asked for our help in getting electricity to the town, but we didn’t have a feed in there.

Luckily, some of our employees realized that we had a transmission interconnection just south of the Mississippi-Louisiana border that ties into Mississippi Power’s lines. Working with their employees, our guys figured out that if we rebuilt that segment we could tie into their system and flow power into Collins.

That was easier said than done. They had to first build a road through miles of marsh to even get to the area where a transmission tower and seven miles of line were crumpled and buried in muck. The next problem was finding a specialized helicopter that could airlift a transmission tower into the site.

Then-U.S. Senator Trent Lott and then-Maj. Gen. Harold Cross of the Mississippi National Guard came to the rescue, and the rebuilding of a major transmission artery and restoration of power to Collins, which should have taken weeks to accomplish, was finished in under seven days. A national crisis was averted.

I was so proud of our team for coming up with that plan. It’s a great example of people coming together to help one another out in our darkest hour.

I continue to see this spirit every day as our employees go about their jobs working to keep the lights on for our now-442,000 Mississippi customers.

Though Entergy’s “war room” lies mercifully dormant today, we are well prepared for this year’s hurricane season. Katrina was a demanding teacher, but the lessons we learned have led to improvements in customer service and logistics today.

We’re encouraged that natural disasters can and will be overcome by the human spirit. Entergy Mississippi has built a company that can meet challenges today and far into the future. We know the dedication, energy and passion we’ve seen in our company and our state can fuel a brighter future for Mississippi.

So, Booth, his wife and his young son and daughter made the 1,200-mile trek south to the Gulf. Booth soon began to learn about the hurricane-prone gulf weather patterns and city’s evacuation routes. “Being from up north, it was a shock.” He remembers orders to get out of town. “Who is evacuating? The whole city?”

Over the next few years, evacuating and working remotely became a standard practice as Booth and his family repeatedly gathered up their most precious possessions and relocated once or twice each storm season. But even the most rigorous drill scenario could not have prepared them for the storm that would swallow their new hometown.

“Hurricane Katrina was so surreal. I had never seen devastation on that scale.”  Designated as an “away” storm responder, Booth was sent to work in Little Rock to support the outage-reporting part of the restoration effort.

“We worked 16-hour days for several weeks making sure the servers were running and providing outage reports to the storm teams. It was a crazy and exhausting time, but you knew you had to keep going until the job was done,” said Booth.

Meanwhile, Booth’s wife Sonya, their 14-year old son J.R. and 12-year old daughter Chelsea set up camp at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Little Rock. That’s really where the tide began to change for Booth’s future. “Everyone we came into contact with was so warm and welcoming to us,” said Booth. “There were several families from New Orleans staying at the same hotel. The management even simulated a Mardis Gras experience to make us feel at home.”

It was the temporary stay that would quickly become a permanent plan, thanks to the collective embrace of the capital city. “My wife experienced it more than I did,” said Booth. “We would go out to eat at restaurants and people were paying for our dinners because they knew we were from New Orleans,” added Booth. “One lady who worked at the hotel even invited us to her home to eat dinner. It was unbelievable.”

After wrapping up his work on Katrina, Booth was offered the chance to move to a new job in Little Rock. “Even though we built a network of friends in New Orleans, the experience in Little Rock made the decision much easier,” said Booth. “My kids, however, didn’t react to the news as well. By this time, they were 14 and 12. New Orleans was the only home they had really ever known.”

So, once again, they packed up their lives and headed to the natural state. In 2007, Booth had another transition when he became a full-time Entergy Arkansas employee as an electrical engineer with the distribution planning group. Since then, Booth has worked in several departments including distribution, transmission, and meter services. His latest job is the farthest departure from his engineering roots but allows him to incorporate much of his operational knowledge. “I’m a Senior Project Manager in the Entergy Business Development Group. I use my technical experience to help bring new growth projects to life in Arkansas, Mississippi and Northern Louisiana.”

Booth’s job covers a lot of Entergy’s southern footprint, but his roots are unquestionably planted in Arkansas. “If you told me 20 years ago I would be living a full and blessed life in Arkansas I would have said ‘no way.’ But, now when people ask me where I’m from, I proudly say Little Rock is my home.”

And as for those two reluctant teenagers? JR is getting a degree in criminal justice, and Chelsea recently completed her degree in business administration, both at Arkansas colleges. “They have grown to love it so much here; I don’t think I could convince them to move back.”
 
 

And it was a long time before he could stop working at his outdoor “office” of a table and four chairs and start working in a regular building.

“It took about two weeks after the storm before I could come back,” Jallans said, adding he had to get there by ferry. When he finally got to the Entergy office in Chalmette, the mud was so thick that he had to engage the four-wheel drive on his truck. “There was so much mud on the property that we filled 196 dump truck loads with it,” he recalled.

That didn’t stop Jallans, however. Along with then-senior engineer David Cook and their co-workers, he immediately rolled up his sleeves and got to work on the seemingly insurmountable task of restoring power to the areas just east and south of New Orleans.

Since the Entergy office was affected like everything else around it, Jallans and his crew set up a table in the parking lot. “After the storm, there was nothing,” Jallans said. “You couldn’t even plug in a coffee pot – there was zero power and so much damage. I was told that 98 percent of all structures in St. Bernard Parish were underwater. The parish was totally devastated.”

But from that table, which graduated to a motorhome to a temporary building known as “the snowball stand” to a trailer, Jallans, Cook, and the rest of the crew got to work.

“From day one, we provided power to our customers and never told anyone they couldn’t have it,” Cook said. He added that although it may have taken some time to overcome obstacles, the power eventually went on. “Once we got started, nothing stopped us.”

Jallans and Cook recalled working around the clock for six months to restore the power in storm-ravaged St. Bernard Parish and a portion of Plaquemines Parish. “We did it and I’m really proud of what we did – I think it went very well,” Cook said.

One item crucial to their success made it through the storm. When Jallans was able to get into their old office, he found the switching board – a large board outlining the district’s power grid – slightly damaged, but intact. He called Cook and together they were able to reassemble it for use in the restoration efforts.

“That board was the most important thing in the office,” Jallans said. “At first, we were using paper maps, but finding the board made it a whole lot easier. It was an invaluable tool to us.”

The new Chalmette office opened in 2009 to replace the original building destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Since then, the devastated Entergy office building farther south near Belle Chasse in Plaquemines Parish was rebuilt to be stronger and higher as well.

Following Katrina, Entergy was committed not only to restoring St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, but all destroyed parts of its service territory. Jallans was pleased when a new 4,750-square-foot Chalmette Service Center was unveiled in late 2009 to house the linemen and other workers who help provide electricity to the area. The building is built on a raised foundation to reduce the risk of damage from future storm surge and to help Entergy rapidly respond to future storms.

“If this place gets flooded again, the top floor will be ready to go,” Jallans remarked. “The offices are high and fitted with generators and windows that can withstand winds up to 150 miles per hour. Employees could stay during a storm if they had to and could also get back by boats and tie them up to the second floor.”

Cook added that the new building and efforts to not only restore, but improve, service show that the company is committed to the customers it serves.

“Entergy’s proactive efforts in making improvements are an investment in customers,” he said. “We met customers’ needs by providing good, reliable power when they needed it. And once we restored their power after Katrina, we immediately started trying to make it better.”

As the legendary storm approached central Mississippi, Jeter and his team of employees continued to assess just how strong the hurricane was, adjusting plans as necessary. The group studied storm-tracking information, office staffing, scouting, material needs and staging sites for restoration.��

Jeter called all of his employees into a downtown Jackson office that Monday, where they rode out the storm so they could get out quickly to begin assessing damage after the weather had passed. All the while, they were hoping that, in the end, such dedicated preparation would prove to be overkill. ��

But it didn’t.��

On the afternoon of Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina roared through central Mississippi. In the hours and days following the storm, employees at Entergy Mississippi, Inc. learned just how valuable their planning had been.

“It was a mess,” said Jeter. “When we began surveying the damage, we knew it was going to be a long road. Those of us in distribution operations don’t panic about those kinds of things, but we could tell that this storm was bigger in scope than nearly anything we’d ever done. We knew it would be one heckuva challenge.”

That first night, Jeter returned home very late to check on his home and his family.

“I tried to make sure my structure was still there,” he noted. “I had limbs and things like that all over the yard, but no serious damage to my house. I was lucky. I checked on my wife and kids and spent that first night after the storm at home.”

It would be one of the last times Jeter would see his family for several days. His wife, Peggy, and two twin sons went to stay with a friend, and Jeter got to work. In the days following Katrina, he’d arrive at the Distribution Operations Center by 6 a.m. and work all day and into the night. He’d go home around midnight for a shower and a change of clothes, circle back through the DOC at about 1:30 a.m. for one last check, then head to the company’s South Street office to sleep.

The DOC was a flurry of activity. Jeter and his team took a divide and conquer approach, segmenting the Jackson area and assigning each part to a different restoration team. He was also spending time updating customer service managers about progress and expectations, managing the mutual assistance crews arriving to help and working to restore hospitals and emergency response partners.

“Early on, there were issues with water and sewer services all over the metro area,” added Jeter. “There were just so many people in and out of the DOC, phones ringing constantly, talk on the radio constantly. There were days it almost felt like the New York Stock Exchange.”

Employees at the DOC managed this frenzied pace, working from dawn until midnight most days, for the first few days of the restoration. On day four, though, fatigue began to set in.

“I could see people starting to get tired and stressed,” noted Jeter. “We knew we had to push through that, so I started encouraging our folks to get home before midnight as best I could. We needed to recharge, because it was going to be a long battle.”

As employee teams began to get more circuits back on, morale improved. More critical services – such as water, hospitals, gas stations and grocery stores – had been restored, and such progress focused employees on the end goal.

“Our initial estimate for total restoration was 18 days,” said Jeter. “Later, we refined that to 14 days. I think that, when it was all said and done, we restored every customer who could take service somewhere around day 11 or 12. To make that happen, our employees had to step up quickly and lead. Nearly everyone had to take on a different role to get that restoration done. It was very stressful, but they did it. It just goes to show you that we can do great things when faced with adversity.”