By Stephanie Kelly
LAKE CHARLES (Reuters) – More than half a million Louisiana residents woke up on Saturday without electricity after Hurricane Delta tore across the state, some only having just had their power restored after Hurricane Laura wiped it out weeks ago.
By mid-morning, some 575,000 customers across Louisiana were without power, down from nearly 600,000, according to PowerOutage.US, which tracks disruptions across the United States.
In Lake Charles, Sylvia Pastrano, 65, got her electricity back on about 10 days ago, she said, while her internet connection was just restored last week.
“We were just getting back to semi-normal and then this happened,” she said while assessing damage to her roof early Saturday morning.
Delta made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 100 miles per hour (161 kph) on Friday near the town of Creole. By Saturday, however, it had weakened to a depression.
Delta’s path compounded damage already made by more powerful Hurricane Laura, which came ashore in the region in late August.
Matthew Williams had been without power in his Lake Charles home until a week and a half ago. Williams, a 49-year-old teacher, said he had gone two weeks without electricity in the Louisiana heat.
“I didn’t have a generator, so I kind of sucked it up and slept on a hammock,” Williams said.
Dale Melancon, 67, in Lake Charles, is not too worried about when the power will come on next.
“We have a generator and we’re trying to get it going this morning.”
(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
