Saturday marked the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Gustav making landfall near Cocodrie with 105 mile-per-hour winds. The storm left 1.5 million without power in Louisiana and former Entergy spokesperson Jeff Holeman told Talk Louisiana with Jim Engster the outages were extensive.

"Never in my wildest dreams that I would imagine we can have that much damage and we actually had customers who were without power for three weeks, " said Holeman.

Houma, Baton Rouge and even central Louisiana received extensive wind damage. The recovery was slow at first because of the lack of power and Holeman remembers frustration levels were high.
"When you are out of power a couple of days that's okay, but when you are without power for a week or more than that, it's a serious thing," said Holeman.
Holeman says utility crew workers from 26 states and Canada came to Louisiana to help restore power lines destroyed by Gustav's fierce winds.
"Gustav took down gigantic structures, big, huge transmission lines in the middle of the cane fields that bring power from the power stations in," said Holeman.
48 deaths in Louisiana were blamed on Gustav. Several people died as a result of trees falling on their homes.

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