A power outage knocked out electricity to more than 2,000 Entergy customers across the Irish Channel and surrounding Uptown neighborhoods, leaving homes between Magazine and Tchoupitoulas streets and General Taylor Avenue and Felicity Street without lights for hours before crews restored service by mid-afternoon.
At its peak around 10:40 a.m., the outage stretched across the Irish Channel, Touro, East Riverside, St. Thomas Development and a small portion of the Lower Garden District, according to nola.com. By mid-afternoon, power had been restored to all affected customers, the outlet reported.
Entergy New Orleans spokesperson Beau Tidwell told the outlet that the cause of the outage remained under investigation.
Construction Crews Had Been Working in the Area for Months
Entergy crews have been working on infrastructure improvement projects in the Irish Channel and Garden District area for several months, and that construction work has led to sporadic power outages in the neighborhood, per the same nola.com account. It is unclear whether Thursday's outage was connected to that ongoing work.
A Pattern of Outages Across Uptown
Thursday's blackout is not an isolated event for the neighborhood. The Lens reported that at least 1,200 Entergy customers lost power in a separate incident Uptown between Freret and Tchoupitoulas streets, while WDSU documented another Uptown outage that affected roughly 1,900 customers and began just before noon.
The repeated disruptions come against the backdrop of a broader reliability slide for Entergy New Orleans. The utility reported 304,178 customer interruptions in 2025, up from roughly 250,000 in 2024 and the highest total since 2017, according to nola.com's reporting on the utility's rate filings. Nearly half of last year's outages were caused by equipment failures, the outlet reported.
Equipment Failures Driving a Costly Fix
The equipment problems have not let up in 2026. More than one-third of the 716 power outages Entergy reported in New Orleans during the first three months of the year were caused by equipment failures, according to The Lens. From April through July, more than 17,000 Entergy households experienced outages totaling more than 12,000 hours without power, the publication reported, citing the figures presented to the New Orleans City Council.
Entergy New Orleans has said it is midway through a grid-hardening initiative intended to upgrade nearly 3,100 structures by the end of this year, and that it is investing in reliability improvements in every City Council district through its Accelerated Resilience Plan, according to a statement posted on Entergy's own blog. The utility is also seeking approval for a rider fee to fund $400 million worth of work to harden the electricity grid, according to nola.com's coverage of the proposal.
That rider, if approved, would cost customers an estimated $1 per month in 2027 and $3.28 per month in 2028, per the same nola.com report. For Irish Channel residents who spent part of Thursday without power, the proposal underscores the tension between near-term costs and a grid that has been increasingly prone to equipment-driven failures.
