Business Report
The Baton Rouge Area Chamber today released an analysis of responses to its Hurricane Ida business impact survey, which closed at noon.
The survey collected responses from 163 regional businesses, and found that 74% of businesses are dealing with closures caused by Hurricane Ida, with most citing the loss of electricity and internet connection as the main reason they were unable to resume operations.
“Businesses throughout the Capital Region continue to struggle with issues related to power and internet accessibility: two out of every three businesses that closed after Ida are not able to reopen until they and their employees are reconnected to the grid,” says Andrew Fitzgerald, senior vice president of business intelligence, in a prepared statement. “The good news is that only four of the 163 survey respondents (2.5%) mentioned storm-related damages as the reason behind their temporary business closure.” See the full survey results.
BRAC has also been tracking all available data related to power outages in the region. Things are slowly improving in East Baton Rouge Parish, which Entergy announced this morning should be back at full power by next Wednesday, going down from 74% to 43% without power since the storm. Here are the biggest takeaways from BRAC’s data analysis:
• Nearly 42,000 customers regained power over today, and almost 200,000 since Monday;
• West Feliciana, Pointe Coupee, and West Baton Rouge are back to normal;
• St. Helena (98.8%), Livingston (78.3%), and Ascension (60.8%) still have significant outages;
• While East Baton Rouge is down to 43.0% of the parish without power, that’s still over 92,000 customers in the parish.
| Parish | Tracked | Outages (8/30) | %age Out | Outages (8/31) | %age Out | Outages (9/1) | %age Out | Outages (9/2) | %age Out |
| Ascension | 58,304 | 52,657 | 90.3% | 47,692 | 81.8% | 46,377 | 79.5% | 35,425 | 60.8% |
| EBR | 216,086 | 160,410 | 74.2% | 126,170 | 58.4% | 117,311 | 54.3% | 92,864 | 43.0% |
| EF | 10,357 | 5,155 | 49.8% | 5,433 | 52.5% | 4,983 | 48.1% | 2,901 | 28.0% |
| Iberville | 9,087 | 5,050 | 55.6% | 4,696 | 51.7% | 3,820 | 42.0% | 3,300 | 36.3% |
| Livingston | 68,420 | 22,810 | 33.3% | 55,898 | 81.7% | 55,775 | 81.5% | 53,556 | 78.3% |
| PC | 5,091 | 1,798 | 35.3% | 835 | 16.4% | 41 | 0.8% | 1 | 0.0% |
| St. Helena | 6,961 | 4,100 | 58.9% | 4,211 | 60.5% | 4,211 | 60.5% | 6,875 | 98.8% |
| WBR | 12,840 | 3,218 | 25.1% | 573 | 4.5% | 60 | 0.5% | 2 | 0.0% |
| WF | 6,354 | 2,153 | 33.9% | 3,856 | 60.7% | 3,885 | 61.1% | 18 | 0.3% |
| TOTAL | 393,500 | 257,351 | 65.4% | 249,364 | 63.4% | 236,463 | 60.1% | 194,942 | 49.5% |