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CITY OF RAYNE utilities crews were called out just before 6 p.m. Tuesday when an Entergy service line went down, resulting in a power outage throughout Rayne. The electricity remained out until just before 9 p.m. (Acadian-Tribune photo by Lisa Soileaux)

City of Rayne, parts of parish left in the dark

Service line failure cause of outage

For just over three hours Tuesday night, the city of Rayne and other areas of Acadia Parish, was thrown back into the dark ages.
Electrical service to the entire city stopped at about 5:40 p.m. Most people regained power at just after 8:50 p.m.
“Entergy’s down,” said city utility workers called back to the power plant. Most of the employees were on hand, but there was little they could do until the service line was rerouted.
“What happened was, Entergy’s main transmission service line — the one that services Rayne, rural east Crowley, Ebenezer, Duson and the western area of Scott — developed loss of power from an unknown source,” Mayor Charles “Chuck” Robichaux said Tuesday night.
“Entergy’s Ted Johnson told me they assumed it happened between the Dischler Substation and the Frog Substation, which is near Econo-Mart.”
Robichaux said Entergy linemen had to backtrack the lines from the areas that were affected to try to find the problem.
Workers reportedly isolated the cause of the problem between Ebenezer and rural parts of Rayne.
On the home front, “Our service people were out within minutes of the 5:38 (p.m.) outage and remained out beyond 8:57 (p.m.) when the power came back on until the Entergy people were through in case they needed our help,” Robichaux said.
The mayor explained that local personnel remained “on call” to ensure a quick response in the event of another outage.
“The city of Rayne apologizes for any inconvenience this outage may have caused its citizens,” Robichaux said, “but some things, like this incident, are out of our hands.”
Rayne wasn’t alone in this outage. All of Duson, parts of Ebenezer, U.S. Highway 90 from Rayne towards Crowley, parts of east Crowley (in the rural areas — Crowley proper is served by Cleco), and La. Highway 35 South in Rayne going towards Indian Bayou were in the dark.

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