LAFAYETTE, La. — Temperatures as low as 20 degrees hitting South Louisiana and with it, comes freezing rain and ice.
The sudden freeze caused ice to form on utility power lines, which cut the power to hundreds of homes when residents needed heat the most.
Slemco, a local utility company is working quickly to hit ice off the power lines.
"We have at least a half inch surrounding the wire, each wire and what has happened between the wind blowing and the vibration of the wire, and the ice we had a lot if bolts on the cross arms break."
Mary Laurent, Communications Coordinator for Slemco, wants to reassure the communities that the grid is stable.
"It has nothing to do with the grid itself and there has been transformers in certain areas that have been overloaded, but by far the biggest issue is the ice. We had precipitation and if it was just cold and it was windy just wind, we wouldn't have nearly as many issues as we had," said Laurent.
According to Laurent, 6,000 out of 10,000 Slemco customers were without power.
Among those customers was Baraba Pitz, her husband and their 4 young children.
"I was staying awake because the wind was really bad and I think it was around 10:30 pm when it started going off and then it completely shut off," she says.
The family moving from Pennsylvania just a year ago and were left without power for 12 hours.
"We are not from here, we are from Pennsylvania so we left all of our warm stuff at home, we didn't have much," Pitz said.
The family not expecting this type of weather in Louisiana.
"We grabbed all the blankets we could and threw them on all the kids, I was more worried about him and the kids, my husband laid on the couch and we stayed in one room," she says.
Pitz telling me that in dark moments, there is always light.
"Keep hope, make fun of it don't make it a scary situation, just make light of it you get to spend time together that you normally don't get," says Pitz.
