A power outage Tuesday night on the Northshore is being investigated by both Cleco and Entergy. The outage, which lasted a few hours for some, happened as temperatures were dropping into the 30's.
It was an interesting night on the Northshore, when things went dark on one of the coldest nights of the season.
"We were all just looking at each other trying to figure out what happened," said Ismael Vazquez, with Vazquez Seafood and Po-Boy.
"All of a sudden, all the equipment shut down," said Stephen Lyon at Buster's Place. "Not only did it get pitch black, but it got pitch black throughout the whole town."
The power outage spanned St. Tammany and Tangipahoa parishes, and affected more than 40,000 customers at its peak.
"Usually it's a small area, nothing this big, so that was kind of a surprise," Vazquez said.
For some, the outage lasted more than two-hours. However, in Covington, the blackout was brief. It was enough though to get people talking.
"I don't know if we've ever been out for more than 30 seconds," Lyon said.
"The concern was no traffic lights," Vazquez said. "The jam that we had out here in the front was unbelievable. It was backed up. Also if it lasted longer the temperatures could've been a concern, everything we have is electric."
Both CLECO and Entergy sent out statements Wednesday. CLECO wrote:
"Utility company's transmission lines are interconnected. Issues on one utility's line can impact another. Last night there was an issue on a non-Cleco transmission line which feeds into a Cleco substation. The substation didn't isolate the fault which led to 16,706 Cleco customers losing power at 6:30 p.m. Within 12 minutes, 9,263 of affected Cleco customers' power was restored and the remaining customers' power was restored by 9 p.m."
Entergy also wrote:
"Last evening's outages were caused by a series of events. The first being a fault on a transmission line. That caused a three-minute outage around 6:30 p.m. to approximately 17,000 Entergy Louisiana customers in Ponchatoula. We are still investigating the root cause of the initial transmission line incident. At the CLECO substation in Madisonville, there were approximately 4600 Entergy Louisiana customers that experienced an outage because of an incident at the substation. Our customers were restored at approximately 8 p.m. CLECO and Entergy are still analyzing and investigating the event."
With power now back on, and businesses up and running, people are happy things are back to normal, and grateful it wasn't worse.