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Downed wire leaves thousands in Mid-City without power

The last big power outage in Mid-City was about 5-6 weeks ago when an aluminum coated balloon hit a power line.

MID-CITY - Thousands were without power Wednesday in Mid-City. During the afternoon, crews were called out to Canal and South Murat streets to fix a wire that was down.

The last big power outage in Mid-City was about 5-6 weeks ago when an aluminum coated balloon hit a power line. This outage wasn't caused by a balloon, but it does have some people scratching their heads.

"I heard the boom and saw the sparks," said resident Lauren Bourdier.

Parts of Mid-City unexpectedly went dark.

"It was pretty loud, it scared me. I ran back inside," said Bourdier.

The power outage affected thousands, temporarily suspending streetcar service, affecting schools and hitting restaurants like Namese, during the lunch rush.

"Between 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. the lights just went out, out of nowhere," said Assistant Manager Alonzo Melgar. "No one knew what was going on. A couple of customers stayed, a couple left. Couldn't do much about it."

Residents from around City Park to Earhart Boulevard also lost power.

"I wasn't quite sure what had happened but it was scary," said resident Marcel Marrill.

Some neighbors on South Murat Street say they heard three explosion-like sounds. Marrill says it came out of nowhere.

"All of a sudden everything just kind of made a boom and started buzzing and I thought oh no, I'm blowing the fuses in the house by running the air conditioning and vacuuming the same time," said Marrill.

Entergy told Eyewitness News the cause of this outage was a downed wire from windy conditions. But some question if that's really the case.

"Interesting," reacted Bourdier. "I feel like it's not even that windy today, that we've had much windier days here so, kind of makes you wonder."

"It wasn't that windy I was doing work in the backyard so nothing stronger than normal, so who knows," said Marrill.

Wind gusts were reported in New Orleans to be 20 to 30 miles per hour, which some feel shouldn't have been enough to knock out power to homes and businesses.

"It brought down our whole server in our office," said Bourdier. "It's an annoying day, it ends the day."

As people watched crews work to restore it, their frustrations dimmed after about an hour, their lights turned back on.

"When it happen we're kind of used to it at this point but we shouldn't have to be," said Melgar.

Eyewitness News tried to reach Entergy to ask how many outages there have been over the last six months in New Orleans, however, a response was not given before this story aired.

According to the Alliance for Affordable Energy, from June 2016 to May 2017, New Orleans reported almost 2,600 outages. District D, the report says, had the second highest number of outages of about 729. Read their report here.

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