Storms knock out power in St. Mary

Several thousand residents in St. Mary Parish lost power this weekend, at least partly because of severe storms, according to officials.

Morgan City lost power citywide late Saturday morning after losing its connection through Cleco at the Bayou Ramos power substation, City Utilities Director Bill Cefalu said.

Cleco Spokeswoman Jennifer Cahill said at 9:45 a.m. Saturday Cleco officials found a fault in a circuit breaker that feeds the Bayou Ramos substation. Cleco safely re-energized the connection about an hour later, Cahill said.

Just after 11 a.m. Sunday, a storm came through the area and wind knocked out the Young Road and Klingsville circuits, Cefalu said. Power was restored to the Youngs Road area in about 15 minutes.

Some wire burnt on Pecan Street on the Klingsville circuit, so that area stayed without power for almost two hours, Cefalu said.

About 4,500 Cleco customers lost power around 11 a.m. Sunday in St. Mary Parish, Cahill said. The causes of the outages were all storm related, she said. Over 4,000 customers got power back within an hour, but there were scattered outages that continued longer.

The specific time of the outages was not available as of 9 a.m. Monday morning.