Mississippi Power’s recovery efforts have restored service to the vast majority of customers who lost power due to damage caused by Hurricane Ivan. As of 8:00 am Saturday, approximately 6,000 customers remained without service, primarily around Meridian. More than 70,000 customers were initially affected after the storm.

“We expect all customers who can receive power to have it by the end of today,” said company spokesman Kurt Brautigam. “Our crews made good progress in Meridian yesterday repairing damage to the backbone of the local system, so now we can concentrate on the remaining pockets where customers remain out of service.”

Damage in the Meridian division caused by Ivan’s tropical storm level winds was as bad as anyone in the company could remember, causing approximately 25,000 outages. More than 100 trees were knocked down on lines and nearly 50 poles were snapped and had to be replaced.

“We’ve brought more than 800 linemen, tree trimmers and support personnel into our area to help with the restoration effort,” said Brautigam. “As soon as we complete our effort, those crews and many of our employees will move on to Alabama and Florida.”

Service restoration was completed for nearly all Coast division customers by late Friday—approximately 51,000 Coast customers were initially impacted. An additional 6,000 customers in the Pine Belt division lost service Thursday, but nearly all were restored by the end of that evening.

“We’re very fortunate, obviously, compared to the amount of damage we’re seeing in areas of Alabama and Florida,” Brautigam said. “Our employees have performed very well and we appreciate all of the help that we’ve received from our customers and public safety officials. If anyone has any questions or concerns, we would ask that they please contact us.”

Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, serves more than 193,000 customers in 23 southeastern Mississippi counties.