According to Cleco, the power outage happened at 9:36 a.m. they said, the issue was safely and quickly resolved, and power was restored to all impacted customers at 10 a.m.
Residents and businesses say, they had no idea what was going on, when the power outage occurred and they were not informed by Cleco.
"The Cleco crews were experiencing an unforeseen failure, doing regular routine check ups, roughly about 5500 customers here in the city of Opelousas, they restored the power within 30 minutes or so it's unfortunate that this occurred here." said Opelousas Mayor, Julius Alsandor.
Nitin Shah, owner of A & B Quick Shop said, "Power went on first it started flickering on and off, then on and off for 5 minutes then one phase went off all my coolers were off, the lights were on and after 5 minutes the power completely went off"
Business owners say they would like Cleco Electric Power Company, to have better communication with them.
"It was the whole town off, it came within 8 to 10 minutes, it came back but, I have to close and customers, also don't know that, if we need to open in 10 minutes, or if we need to open in half an hour or hour.
Sometimes, it takes up to an hour to 2 hours during the power outage, and none of the times even if it's strong things or whatever it is, which they knew it before, they never prepare us." said, Nitin Shah, owner of A & B Quick Shop.
