Morgan City Power Outage UPDATE

From our sister-station, NewsTalk 965 KPEL's Brandon Comeaux:

6:47 p.m. Wednesday, June 27: According to the City of Morgan City Facebook Page, the electricity is back on in Morgan City, being provided by the Steam Plant's Unit #4. Unless there is another failure, officials say the dusk to dawn curfew will be lifted. All shelters are closed. Officials warn residents that there is still the potential for intermittent outages.

10:17 a.m. Wednesday, June 27: The crews who are working to restore electricity to most of the citizens of Morgan City have been working overtime since the fire yesterday at around 6 p.m. Workers are trying to repair the city's power system after a fire and explosion of a transformer last night. With temperatures expected rise today, along with heat indices near 108 degrees, crews are working as quickly as possible to restore power.

Hospitals and nursing homes are using their backup generators again today. Typically they only use those when the city is experiencing a hurricane. Mayor Tim Matte says they have set up a shelter to try cool residents who have special medical needs. It is open in Berwick. As far as water and wastewater services, Matte says they are working, but citizens are being asked to use them as little as possible.

Resident Chris Eastling posted this on his Facebook page:

"I was in and out of the old plant taking food and powerade to the guys busting their ****s in there last night. Here is what I know is going on. They have to get the generator running at the old diesel power plant on front street in order to supply power to crank the generators at the plant that caught fire yesterday. That generator is up and running. Has been since about 10 last night....they are having problems getting the generators started at the steam plant because though they were maintained they haven't been run in a while and some of the regulating equipment is malfunctioning. And for those wondering why this is.....the Morgan City Power Plant does not generate its own electricity.....it has the ability to but at the moment it's cheaper to buy and resell Cleco's electricity. What you saw on fire yesterday was the transformer that takes in the electricity from Cleco.....so like an old car that hasn't run in a while it's going take some tweaking."

 

(Via KPEL965)