Lights Out In Lafayette – Power Outage Affects Thousands

About 10:30 last night I was awakened from my blissful sleep by  my wife and kids. Oddly enough instead of there being a huge stream of light flowing into the bedroom from the hall there were only voices in the dark. My wife announced that the power had gone out. Normally my cynical self would ask, "why wake me up to tell me it's dark?" but I knew there was another reason.

Power going out means alarm clocks don't work the next time you need them. For thousands of Lafayette Utilities System customers that will be the case this morning. It was speculated that at least 3-thousand customers were without power from approximately 10:30 to Midnight. The issue was reported to be with a substation. Attempts to gain further information at this early time of day have not yielded many details.

A quick check of the L-U-S outage map during the time of the power outage gave misleading information. At the time the power was out in my neighborhood that site, reached via my mobile device, said no power outages were reported. However, State Police felt obligated to issue an alert at 11:30pm reminding motorist traveling in the vicinity of Acadiana Mall to treat those intersections with non-working traffic signals as four-way stops.

Based upon social media comments, the power outage appears to have affected the Mall area south down Johnston Street and into other neighborhoods along E.Broussard Road. Crews from L-U-S were able to have the power restored at my house just off Johnston by 11:50pm. An L-U-S spokesperson told other media outlets that the power has now been completely restored.