Listen to Entergy Mississippi President and CEO Haley Fisackerly discuss the recent power outages plaguing central Mississippi.
Fisackerly said the outages knocked out power to 50 percent of Entergy customers -- about 230,000 homes -- and was the worst event except Katrina in his 20-year career.
Since June 10, Entergy has replaced 580 poles. "This has been one storm rolling into another storm," Fisackerly said. "We had 5 severe thunderstorms hit us over the course of seven days. We're used to thunderstorms but not ones that pack 80 mile-an-hour winds. Keep in mind that a class one hurricane starts at 75 miles an hour."
Fisackerly said if this had been a hurricane there would have been time to see it out and the gulf and prepare. Instead, thunderstorms are entirely unpredictable.
In addition, these storms didn't hit just Mississippi, but Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. So emergency crews were tied up in other states and could not quickly come to Mississippi.
About 15 percent of all the homes in Mississippi lost power during this event.
Listen to the video for further insights into the cause of these storms and the challenges they presented to Entergy and its customers.
