Tropical Storm Isaac pummeled Baton Rouge with sustained winds between 20 and 40 mph for nearly 24 hours, but the University’s flagship campus did not lose power except for about a minute on Tuesday night during an electrical test.
Popular off-campus student living quarters knocked out by Isaac included large swaths of the Garden District, Northgate, Brightside View and parts of The Cottages of Baton Rouge according to Entergy’s online outage map.
Entergy repair teams began assessing power outages around midnight on Wednesday, said Will Johnson, Entergy customer service manager. As assessments are completed, repair teams will work to return power to customers as soon as possible, he said.
The service teams were in full force by 7 a.m., and although the assessment will last all day and likely into tomorrow, the power is already returning to some previously blacked-out areas, Johnson said.
The Louisiana Public Service Commission reported that 903,000 Louisiana homes and businesses were without power, about half of the state’s utility customers, according to an Associated Press article.
As of 11 a.m. Thursday morning, Entergy reported about 78,000 East Baton Rouge Parish customers without power, down about 7,000 from the peak Wednesday night, according to their web site outage map.  
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Contact Ben Wallace at [email protected]