By Amy Moore

The News staff writer

The largest restoration effort in Entergy’s history was completed Thursday, less than two weeks after Hurricane Ike’s billowing winds and flooding surge crashed into the Texas coastline.

Debi Derrick, media relations with Entergy, said the customers who can safely take power have been restored.

Ike caused outages to 99 percent of Entergy’s customers, leaving some 392,600 customers without power. Entergy determined that about 7,300 customers are not capable of receiving power because of the substantial devastation to their homes and businesses.

Ike’s storm surge inundated coastal areas, severely flooding communities from Orange County to Bolivar Peninsula.

Joe Domino, Entergy Texas president and CEO, said Entergy Texas will not abandon those customers as they begin to rebuild.

“We are at work on a plan to rebuild our electric infrastructure in those areas where customers’ facilities were so damaged they are unable to receive power. We are committed to delivering the power to help our customers rebuild their communities and their lives,” he said.

Derrick said Ike’s Category 2 destruction to the area is worse than that of Hurricane Rita’s Category 3 strength three years ago.

“Ike was all the way around definitely a harder hit than Rita,” she said. “There were similarities as far as double storms. There was Katrina and Rita and then Gustav and Ike that impacted states within our service territory.”

Rita knocked out 287,000 of Entergy’s customers, falling short of the record setting number set by Ike. Ike damaged 186 transmission lines to Rita’s 179 total.

Ike took 282 substations and 10,300 distribution poles offline. Rita damaged 238 substations and 8,454 distribution poles. Ike damaged 2,600 transformers and Rita only took out 1,692.

“The Hurricane Ike restoration will go down in our company’s history books as a mammoth undertaking,” Domino said. “I’m incredibly proud of the capable, competent people who work for Entergy here in Texas and in our other operating companies that provided us so much support. And I am equally grateful to our customers in Southeast Texas for their patience during trying times.”

Ike’s powerful force encompassed 15,000 square miles of Entergy’s service area.

Entergy’s restortation efforts were assisted by an additional 14,000 workers from other power companies across the nation and even Canada.