The parish Office of Emergency Preparedness on Friday posted, “There is an equipment issue at Martin Sub-Station. We believe parts will be there and power restored by 10:00 pm (on Friday)to most residents. We will offer a Warming Station if needed. This will be a place to get warm not to bunk. If you are in need please call the Sheriff’s office at 318-932-4221 and arrangements will be made.”

The most recent update from SWEPCO:

This outage started first when the feed from CLECO went off-line at 7:19 PM on Thursday. This occurred probably because of damage from a tree blown over by the wind.  When CLECO restored power yesterday, we discovered thru testing yesterday that the SWEPCO transformer serving power to 900 Martin area electric customers was also damaged as the result of the events of Thursday afternoon.  SWEPCO crews are now hard at work to bring in a mobile transformer today and if all goes well, they will have power restored this evening. I hope that everything does go well and that we can get the power restored this evening.  The reason that you didn’t see any activity there in your area is that all efforts were focused on restoring the feed from CLECO, and then testing the transformer (and unfortunately) determining that it needed to be replaced.  Please know that the SWEPCO team is working hard to restore power to the Martin community. I realize that it appears that you have been neglected, but that is not the case. Restoration activities have been going on the entire time since the outage occurred on Thursday evening.

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