Tallying the outages as Ida recovery continues

Cellular and wireline communications networks continue to make a slow recovery in the wake of Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane on Sunday afternoon.

According to figures reported to the Federal Communications Commission (pdf), the number of cell sites that are down in the impacted areas of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana has decreased from 28.1% on Monday to 17.1% yesterday. Louisiana, which had more than 50% of its cell sites reported out on Monday, had less than 40% of sites out as of yesterday.

The heaviest concentrations of non-functioning cell sites are close to the coast, where Ida struck with greatest force. The most extensive outage in Terrebonne Parish, which includes the city of Houma and was in the direct path of the storm. That parish was still reporting 100% of its cell sites out as of yesterday: Of the 81 sites serving the area, eight were out due to damage, 39 due to power loss and 38 due to the loss of transport connectivity. Assumption Parish, which has a population of about 23,000, had nearly 95% of its cell sites out of service, as did Lafourche Parish. In the most populous parishes, Orleans and Jefferson, the FCC said that 52.3% and 60.2% of sites were down, respectively, as of yesterday. (The agency noted, however, that the number of reported site outages in an area doesn’t necessarily correlate perfectly to wireless service availability, because some sites may overlap and carriers move in mobile deployables to provide service.)

A handful of public safety answering points (PSAPs) in Louisiana that answer 911 calls are also still being impacted by Ida’s destruction, but most are able to re-route calls to other PSAPs — albeit without location information for the incoming calls. According to the FCC, the PSAPs of the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, Tangipahoa Parish Comm and the West Baton
Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office were down as of yesterday.

Wireline and cable companies reported having telephone, TV or internet service out for nearly 450,000 customers in Louisiana, more than 19,000 customers in Mississippi and about 2,400 customers in Alabama.

Power utilities are beginning to reconnect the approximately 1 million homes and businesses in Louisiana which had power knocked out, but it is likely to be a lengthy process to recover. The main power provider in the area, Entergy, has warned that some of its customers face extended power outages and that “based historical restoration times, customers in the direct path of a storm as intense as Hurricane Ida could experience outages for more than three weeks.” Not only are the last-mile wires carrying power to end users down in many places, but the large, high-voltage transmission lines that carry power regionally have been taken out as well. According to Entergy, damage to eight high-voltage lines took out power for New Orleans and Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, as well as parts of St. Charles and Terrebonne parishes. On Sunday night, one transmission tower near Avondale fell, with its conductor and wires landing in the Mississippi River. 

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell has mayor also said she expects Entergy to be able to provide some electricity to the city by Wednesday evening, the Associated Press reported, but Cantrell also emphasized that does not mean a citywide restoration. Entergy has said in a news release that it is looking at options to “begin powering critical infrastructure in the area such as hospitals, nursing homes and first responders.”

The remnants of Ida continue to move through the Northeast and are causing additional flooding and other issues as they pass. According to Poweroutage.us, which aggregates information about power outages, there are about 11,000 customers in Pennsylvania who have lost power in addition to the major power outages in Mississippi and Louisiana.