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LAPLACE — St. John the Baptist Parish is beginning to see power restoration. Small areas of the parish have become re-energized within the last 48 hours.

Entergy has stated that they are bringing in 200 additional electrical workers with equipment and plan to ramp up restoration efforts within the next few days.

Crews hope to have Airline Highway from Reserve to LaPlace energized soon in addition to parts of the West Bank. Recently, Wallace bridge to St. James received power with more to come. Neighborhoods in Reserve and Garyville have also seen restoration recently.

Entergy is in the process of opening a customer service center on the East & West Bank to answer residents’ questions. We are hopeful in this progress and will continue to update.

As of 6 p.m. Sept. 7, 96% of customers remain without power in St. John. Damage assessments are 96% complete.

The estimated date of restoration for St. John the Baptist Parish is Sept. 17. However, Entergy Louisiana expects to begin powering critical facilities and other social infrastructure within the parish well in advance of this date.

In a statement, Entergy said, “We expect to continue this focus while we expand to residential areas and restore power to the parish.  Damage assessments have reported 2,269 poles broken, 2,208 spans of wire down and 373 damaged transformers.  (We are) expecting to have half of the feeders that provide power to the St. John Parish energized by September 7. “