By Malcolm Butler and Wes Harris
It’s estimated somewhere between 15,000 and 18,000 households in Lincoln Parish lost power Sunday afternoon as straight-line winds wreaked havoc in Lincoln Parish.
At approximately 3:30 p.m. a storm with hard rain and strong winds passed through north Louisiana and left thousands without power.
Downed trees and limbs caused downed power lines as City of Ruston, Entergy and Claiborne Electric all reported thousands of customers without power at one point Sunday afternoon and into the evening.
“We got hammered pretty good,” said Lincoln Parish Sheriff Stephen Williams around 7 p.m. Sunday night. “From what I have been told we had about 15 to 20 trees down (within the Parish). It could be more. I don’t know all the details but I know we had some trees on houses. But I know our work crews in the parish got out quickly and got a handle on things.”
Ruston mayor Ronny Walker said that upwards of 80 percent of the city’s approximate 10,000 customers lost power as the storm passed through. However, by 6 p.m. most of those had been restored according to Walker who said about 5 to 10 percent were still without power.
And by 9 p.m. Walker had confirmation the number was less than 100.
“They are replacing a transmission line right now that will take care of those,” he said. “We fortunately have a lot of hard working folks that we called in to help get it fixed.”
Lincoln Parish Director of Homeland Security and Preparedness Kip Franklin said that reports from Entergy and Claiborne Electric had a combined 8,000 plus without power following the storm. Updates at 8 p.m. from Entergy had the number at 4,100 while an update at 8 p.m. from Claiborne Electric had more than 64 percent of their customers without power.
Franklin said that he did not receive any type of warning from the National Weather Service about the storm.
“We didn’t have any advanced communications from them about this,” said Franklin. “We had some emails going into the weekend but they were all about heat, heat, heat. So no real warning on this one.”
Based on the damage around the parish, Franklin said he estimated winds of 70-plus miles per hour.
“It almost reminded me of Hurricane Laura at one point,” said Franklin referring to the Cat 1 Hurricane that hit Ruston in August of 2020.
In addition to downed trees, the winds snapped the 40-foot plus Hampton Inn welcome sign in half as it was laying on the ground outside the hotel along I-20. The Cadence Bank at the corner of Trenton Street and Alabama Avenue appeared to lose part of its roof.
This marked the second time in the last month that straight-line winds caused similar type of impact within Lincoln Parish.
Monday is expected to return to the high temperatures of last week with expected highs in the 90s with the heat index hovering in the 100s.
