As nearly 43,000 residents across the state remain without power, people are not happy with Entergy Mississippi.
Over the course of the weekend, multiple Twitter users called out Entergy, blaming the company for seemingly changing its map to be more vague than usual.
Did entergy just make their outage map more vague? pic.twitter.com/YxWVaONP9n
— Marshall Ramsey ✏️ (@MarshallRamsey) June 16, 2023
Still no power. Entergy map has become less informative as the day has gone on…
— DrLY (@magistraly) June 17, 2023
Power went out at 5:30 a.m. Going on 4 hours with no power. Food is only good for 4 hours in the fridge if you don’t open it. Entergy just removed the ETA on the outage map.
— Ellie Wilson Banks (@iEllie) June 16, 2023
Central District Public Service Commissioner Brent Bailey even issued a scathing statement.
“I am extremely frustrated and disappointed by Entergy Mississippi’s response to the recent storms,” Bailey said. “The delay in restoring power has caused significant hardship for their customers and it is unacceptable. We expect [Entergy Mississippi] to take swift action to address this issue and ensure that our communities are not left in the dark for prolonged periods of time in the aftermath of severe weather events.”
As of Monday morning, around 30,000 of the outages remaining were Entergy customers, some of which have been without power for days.
When asked on The Gallo Show where the company stands on restoring power, Entergy Mississippi CEO Haley Fisackerly said crews are working avidly to get lights back on for customers.
“I know customers are frustrated. We are too. It seems like every time we can get a pole up or a line up, another storm comes through, so we are constantly reassessing,” Fisackerly said. “I’ll give you an example. About 7 or 8 o’clock last night, we were down to about 28,000. Another storm came through and popped us back up to about 30,000.”
Fisackelry added that a multitude of elements is to blame for the constant disruption in service, including a lack of out-of-state resources.
“We have 40 miles of distribution lines that have been knocked down. We’re close to approaching 200 broke poles, so a lot of damage there. A lot of transformers and just a lot of trees blocking roadways,” Fisackerly continued. “We’ve also had some challenges with resources. These storms have hit all our neighboring states, so resources and those other utilities or contractors were slow to release because they’re dealing with their home areas.”
With breaks in severe weather currently taking place in some parts of the state, Entergy Mississippi expects to have at least 2,300 workers on the ground throughout the day. To track power outages in your area, click here.
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