By Jan Griffey

The Orange Leader

 

As of 3 p.m. on Friday, 24,764 residents were still without power in Orange County.

Kacee Kirschvink, a senior communications specialist with Entergy Texas, was giving updates from makeshift headquarters in Conroe, north of Houston.

“It’s just one of those things. It started in the western part of our territory and slowly moved toward Beaumont and Orange,” Kirschvink said of the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey.

Damaged transmission lines and broken poles along with downed power lines and trees on power lines are among the major contributors to the power outage. However, in Orange, flooded substations are the biggest issue, Kirschvink said.

“We managed to get one flooded substation in Orange repaired, which restored power from Mauriceville to Highway 12 and then down to Orange on I-10,” she said. “The substations feed power to the different customers and so as water is receding, we can go in there and make repairs. Unfortunately, water is still rising in those areas.”

She said water is expected to crest sometime this weekend.

In Vidor, 85 percent of Entergy customers have no power since last night, Kirschvink said, because transmission lines that serve the substation there went down. The two to six feet of water that remains in Vidor hamper repairs.

“We’ve been doing aerial inspections of the transmission lines and identifying areas that need to be repaired, using helicopters and boats to get to those inaccessible areas,” she said.

In Orange, Kirschvink said the focus now is restoring power to the area of Front Street and then to the main water pumps and the water treatment plant.