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This story originally appeared in the Jackson Free Press. It was added to the Mississippi Free Press website in 2025.
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The Clarion-Ledger reports today that the 75 percent of Jackson resident still without power could face weeks in the dark:

Power for Jackson residents is likely days, if not weeks, away as Entergy crews work to restore electricity to hospitals and emergency-related buildings. At the peak outages, about 97 percent of Entergy’s customers in Hinds County were without power. Entergy Mississippi CEO Carolyn Shanks said as of 2 p.m. today, about 75 percent of customers were without power. Some Jackson neighborhoods will need complete rebuilding of their electrical systems, the mayor said.


Jackson Mayor Frank Melton estimated costs for cleanup, overtime and repairs would run well into the millions in Jackson alone. […]

Shanks said crews are still assessing all the damage two days after Hurricane Katrina threw limbs and into power lines and trees on homes.

Trees won’t be removed from lines until they’ve all been assessed, she said. “We’re beginning to work on our priorities of water plants, police stations, hospitals and shelters,” she said.

Founding Editor Donna Ladd is a writer, journalist and editor from Philadelphia, Miss., a graduate of Mississippi State University and later the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she was an alumni award recipient in 2021. She writes about racism/whiteness, poverty, gender, violence, journalism and the criminal justice system. She contributes long-form features and essays to The Guardian when she has time, and was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press. She co-founded the statewide nonprofit Mississippi Free Press with Kimberly Griffin in March 2020, and the Mississippi Business Journal named her one of the state's top CEOs in 2024. Read more at donnaladd.com, follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @donnerkay and email her at donna@mississippifreepress.org.