About 18,000 residents in Jefferson County remained without power as of Tuesday afternoon. Many of them live in Louisville’s East End, which LG&E on its website said was hardest hit by Sunday’s storms that brought hurricane-force winds to the area. More than 80 utility poles were broken and 900 wires were downed in Louisville during the severe weather event.
LG&E/KU spokesperson Daniel Lowry told LPM News Tuesday morning the utility expects to restore power to most of its Louisville customers by 11 p.m. Wednesday
“Hopefully we’ll get folks sooner,” Lowry said. “There may be a few that, because of the extensive damages, we don’t get to until after that, but that’s what we’re looking at for most everybody.”
In an online update Monday night, LG&E said utility companies from neighboring states sent 700 line workers, support staff and contractors to help with power restoration.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear also announced late Monday that a fifth person was confirmed dead in connection with the storms. On social media, Beshear said a 54-year-old man in Caldwell County had a heart attack while cutting fallen trees.
“His loved ones are in our prayers during this difficult time,” Beshear said.
The National Weather Service’s Louisville office has confirmed at least two tornadoes touched down in the state.
In the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s storms, some Louisville residents took to social media to express frustration with the lack of communication from LG&E. They reported being unable to get a power restoration estimate from the utility company. When they finally did get information, many received a generic estimate of late Wednesday night.
Lowry said the estimated restoration times are calculated using historical data and real-time information from crews on the ground. He said they can sometimes change based on damage assessments, but the utility tries to give residents the most accurate information.
“And when you do have a situation where you have widespread outages, widespread damage and we have thousands of customers out, it takes some time to get those [estimates] in there for folks,” Lowry said.
Residents can report an outage or check for restoration estimates at LGE-KU.com/storm.
