Francine knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses after it tore through Louisiana as a hurricane on Wednesday.
At 4:30 p.m. Friday, more than 81,916 homes and businesses were still in the dark, according to the United States Power Outage Map.
The storm made landfall Wednesday evening as a Category 2 hurricane in Terrebonne Parish, about 30 miles southwest of Morgan City before it moved into the New Orleans area.
Around 5,500 homes and businesses in New Orleans were still without power at 4:30 p.m. Friday, according to Entergy New Orleans' outage map.
Residents are being told to be cautious on roads and to treat intersections as four-way stops if the lights are out.
Officials also cautioned residents to keep generators at least 15 to 20 feet away from windows and openings in their homes to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning and other hazards. Generators should be turned off at least 15 minutes before fueling to confirm carbon monoxide detectors are still functioning.
Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that after a power outage, food will stay safe to eat up to four hours in a refrigerator, 24 hours in a half-full freezer and 48 hours in a full freezer, as long as the doors stay closed.
Entergy said it might take over a week to restore power to some areas. Nearly 6,000 Entergy workers are expected to respond to the storm, including nearly 1,000 workers in New Orleans.
Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May said the priority is getting power restored to critical infrastructure.
“This includes hospitals, pumping stations, police and fire stations. At the same time, we’re focused on restoring power to the largest number of customers at a time,” he said.
New Orleans opened four charging and cooling stations, where residents can cool off and charge their devices and/or access WiFi while the power is out.
Louisiana’s power companies have outage maps that provide details about the outage, including how many people were affected and the estimated date and time of restoration.
To check the status of your power outage, click on the links below.
