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Utility companies prepare for Nate

6 years 5 months 3 weeks ago Thursday, October 05 2017 Oct 5, 2017 October 05, 2017 9:51 PM October 05, 2017 in News

BATON ROUGE - Crews from DEMCO and Entergy are getting ready for a weekend of possible severe weather related to Nate.

"[We are] ensuring that our fuel tanks are full...to be able to provide fuel, for any large emergency where outside crews are coming in," DEMCO's David Latona said. "...Every bit of equipment is ready."

DEMCO serves seven parishes surrounding Baton Rouge. Latona said they do not know what's going to happen but they are ready to get to work.

"If we can make an assumption, it's the wind damage definitely," Latona said. "There's not predicted to be as much precipitation as in the past, but you never know...we want to be prepared for whatever storm may hit." 

Entergy is preparing for the possibility of heavy rains and hurricane-force wind. Entergy told customers that "line crews and contractors are on alert and ready to safely restore service as quickly as possible."

Friday morning, Entergy was conducting scheduled maintenance. A crew was trimming a leaning tree off Sherwood Forest Drive.

"It's what we call a danger tree that could potentially take out our facilities and cause an outage," a company spokesperson said.

In addition to scheduled work, Entergy is organizing travel teams to help assist with potential problem areas. It's also been looking at patterns from previous outages.

"We do a preliminary analysis on those types of outages and put plans in place to address those outages before they continue," the company advised.

If you think there's a tree or other vegetation that poses a potential risk for a power outage, call Entergy or DEMCO to take a look.

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