On Saturday, a planned outage in Westwego left more than 300 residents without power from 8 a.m. until the late afternoon. Among those affected was 78-year-old Gladys Graham, who had to cancel her birthday plans due to the outage.
“A lot of friends and kin people coming in, and I planned to have a nice dinner for them, you know, but I had to cancel,” Graham said. “I almost cried.”
As a diabetic, Graham said the heat makes managing her health condition more challenging.
“If I get overheated and my blood sugar already be high, it’s a disaster for me,” she said.
On Saturday, the city opened the Senior Center as a cooling center for those affected by the outage.
Power was restored around 4, over two hours earlier than Entergy listed on their website.
While power has turned back on for Graham, more outages are scheduled in Jefferson Parish this week.
Entergy’s online map shows that Elmwood will experience an outage on Tuesday morning, with restoration expected by the afternoon.
Later in the week, Kenner will face an outage from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Terrytown will see over 60 customers affected on Thursday.
Graham’s family celebrated her birthday once the power was restored.
“I hate for the house to be so hot right now, but nothing I can do about it,” she said. “I’m glad the power’s back on; that’s the main thing, you know.”
Residents in the affected areas should have received advance notice from Entergy about the planned outages.
If bad weather occurs, the outages will be rescheduled.
READ MORE:Jefferson Parish residents face power outages during summer heat
