Mississippi Power customers may face multiple days of no electricity because of Zeta
Mississippi Power customers who lost electricity during Hurricane Zeta could be facing the prospect of going without power for multiple days, according to a spokesman for the company.
Jeff Shepard told the Sun Herald Thursday morning that there are about 84,000 customers without power across Mississippi.
“Our customers need to be prepared for a multiple-day restoration event because of damage sustained to our power delivery system,” he said.
Shepard said this applies to all areas dealing with power outages, but Harrison and Hancock counties are facing more difficult situations.
“The worst impacted areas are the Bay-Waveland and down (Highway 90) into Biloxi where the casinos are located,” he said.
After the storm moved through late Wednesday, there were about 91,000 customers who were without power.
“The storm team went to work right after Zeta first moved out of the territory in Harrison and Hancock,” Shepard said. “We began assessing the damage and doing some trouble-shooting to get the lights on. We learned from our initial assessment from the field that our transmission and distribution system has sustained significant damage.”
Shepard said part of the challenge is that some of the company’s transmission infrastructure is located in rural areas.
“That’s more difficult equipment to access,” he said. “The assessment of what needs to be done to get all infrastructure in place is still ongoing. We’ve been working through the night on the distribution side to get lights back on for our customers.”
There are 400 additional personnel from 11 states who are joining the effort to restore power and they began arriving this morning.
This story was originally published October 29, 2020 at 8:16 AM.
