Entergy engineers on Monday were still working to determine the cause of a late-night French Quarter explosion that knocked out power and prompted evacuations to the area on Saturday, with workers focused on repairing and remediating an underground electrical vault damaged in the blast.
The incident, which didn’t cause any injuries, occurred about an hour after the conclusion of the July Fourth fireworks display on the riverfront. Police evacuated a roughly one-block radius around the intersection of Bourbon and Conti streets after the fire resulting from the explosion sent smoke billowing into the area.
In a prepared statement on Monday, Entergy New Orleans spokesperson Beau Tidwell said the fire remained under investigation, with engineers “reviewing our data to determine where and how the event originated.”
“Entergy crews and our environmental remediation contractor are currently cleaning out the burned vault and working to effect repairs,” he added.
The New Orleans Fire Department, which responded to the blast on Saturday, did not provide any additional information on the incident Monday. City Hall referred questions to Entergy.
Speaking at a news conference early Sunday, NOFD Chief Roman Nelson said crews used dry chemical extinguishers on the fire because it was electrical in nature, so they needed to wait to use water until power was disconnected.
While power lines and other electrical infrastructure are typically above ground in most of New Orleans, in the French Quarter, much of that infrastructure is buried. That buried equipment can cause problems, particularly when it interacts with other underground infrastructure.
In December 2019, a early-morning blast on Dauphine Street near Toulouse shot several manhole covers high into the air and set fire to a parked car. An investigation indicated that methane from sewage had collected inside one of Entergy’s transformer vaults and ignited, though officials never determined how it got there.
Danny Raines, a veteran electrical safety consultant based in Georgia, said there are various triggers that can lead to blasts like the one that occurred Saturday night. Speaking generally, and without any specific knowledge about the July 4 incident, he said that aging equipment, commonly including faults on older cables, can create stresses that result in a blast.
“Of course it makes a big old fireball with a lot of smoke,” Raines said, noting that sometimes moisture getting into electrical lines can be a factor and that utilities are typically responsible for clearing their underground vaults.
In its statement, Entergy said crews carry out vault inspections twice annually in an effort to prevent incidents.
The explosion was reported a little after 10:30 p.m. and Entergy said power had been restored by 6:00 a.m. the next morning.
Initially, Entergy representatives said the repairs were delayed after workers were “menaced by an individual threatening to shoot our lineman with a gun.”
New Orleans police and Entergy later confirmed that the threat had come in the form of a phone call to the utility’s call center and that there was no reported in-person threat.
