La. lawmakers still don’t know why phone service went out during Hurricane Ida

25th October 2021   ·   0 Comments

By JC Canicosa
Contributing Writer

(lailluminator.com) — Louisiana Sen. Rick Ward, a Port Allen Republican and chair of the Louisiana Senate Commerce Committee, said Monday that AT&T still hasn’t gotten back to lawmakers about what went wrong during Hurricane Ida and what preventative measures against outages the telecommunications company can take in advance of another storm.

Phone services provided by AT&T went out for state workers, including first responders and 911 communications, in the hours following Ida.

“I do believe at the next joint commerce meeting that hopefully (AT&T) will provide” more details about their outages during Ida, Ward said.

“At least give us a better explanation as to what happened and, more importantly, what they intend to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said. “Assuming they continue to be the group that provides that emergency service.”

Lawmakers may be upset, but it’s unlikely Louisiana will be canceling its agreement with AT&T anytime soon. The state gets AT&T service through FirstNet — a federal program designed to help first responders during emergencies — at no cost to the state.

“We’ll continue to push on that issue” of telecommunications, Ward said.

Uncertainty on how much Hurricane Ida will cost Louisiana residents remains

The Louisiana Public Service Commission is still unsure how much of a surcharge Louisiana for hurricane damage residents will see in upcoming bills or for how long, “until they get a solid sense of what the total replacement and damage is going to be” following Ida, Ward said.

Ward said he expects “there will be some dialogue and negotiation” between the Legislature, the power companies and Public Service Commission as to how much the cost of rebuilding Louisiana residents will have to bear.

Damages from Hurricanes Laura, Delta and Zeta in 2020 combined cost Entergy Louisiana $2.1 billion — a bill that the company said they want to pass along to their customers in additional charges.

During the lawmakers last commerce committee meeting, Entergy said the company were looking to get approval from the Public Service Commission on a $5 additional charge on customers’ monthly bills statewide for the next 15 years to pay for the company’s hurricane damages last year. That doesn’t even include damage from Hurricane Ida, which hit in August.

For some Louisianians, the surcharges in their bills from Hurricane Katrina damages had just started to subside.

“I know they can last a long time,” Ward said. “It’s not like a three-year thing. It’s probably more like a 10-plus year thing.”

This article originally published in the October 25, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.