Mississippi Power crews have restored more than half of the customers who lost power from damage caused by Hurricane Ivan. As of 8:00 am Friday, approximately 24,000 customers remained without service, primarily along the Gulf Coast and around Meridian. More than 70,000 customers were initially affected after the storm.

“Our crews made remarkable progress quickly after the storm moved through our service area,” said company spokesman Kurt Brautigam. “We had nearly half of our Coast customers out of service after Ivan moved inland, but had restored nearly 40,000 by the end of the day. Today we have 400 outside linemen and tree trimmers working in the area, so we expect everyone without damage to their homes to have service by the end of the day.”

Extensive damage occurred in the Meridian division around midday Thursday as tropical storm level winds moved inland, causing an additional 25,000 outages in the company’s northern service area.

“We’ll have an additional 300 linemen arriving in the Meridian area to help with restoration efforts there today,” said Brautigam. “We’re still assessing damage early this morning, but we know we have many trees down on lines and numerous broken poles to replace.”

More than 13,000 Meridian area customers were without power beginning the day Friday. Company crews had restored service to approximately 12,000 customers by Thursday evening. Approximately 6,000 customers in Pine Belt division lost service Thursday, but nearly all were restored by the end of the evening.

“We’re very fortunate, obviously, compared to the amount of damage we’re seeing to areas in Alabama and Florida,” Brautigam said. “Our restoration efforts are going very well and we appreciate all of the help that we’ve received from our customers and public safety officials. We would still caution everyone to continue to be safe and contact us if they have any questions or concerns.”

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