More than 349,000 homes in Louisiana were without power Wednesday night after Hurricane Francine made landfall in Terrebone Parish as a Category 2 storm around 5 p.m. and moved northeast through the state.

As of 11 p.m., about 280,000 Entergy customers were without power. The hardest hit communities were along the coast, including Lafourche and Terrebonne, which together accounted for nearly half of Entergy’s outages.

Thousands were also left in the dark in Assumption, Iberia and St. Mary, East Baton Rouge, Jefferson and St. John the Baptist.

In Orleans Parish, over 34,000 people were on the streets, and there were enclaves throughout the city such as New Orleans East, Gentilly, Mid City, the West Bank and the Lower Garden District.

About 20,000 CLECO Power customers were also affected by power outages, mostly in coastal communities. The utility reported at 7 p.m. that just over 1,000 customers were without power on the North Coast.

Entergy said on social media early Wednesday that it was continuing to make preparations to deal with outages during the storm.

“We have taken proactive measures, such as trimming trees and branches near key power lines,” Entergy said in a post early Wednesday. On Tuesday, Entergy said more than 6,000 of its own employees and contractors had been deployed to respond to the outages.

Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May said in an online video that most reconstruction work would not begin until daybreak Thursday. “We have 6,600 reconstruction workers ready to handle this storm,” he said. He said some crews will be out late Wednesday to do “the minimum amount of work they can do.”

“But come morning, the 6,600-strong crew will begin assessing and repairing the damage. This process will obviously take several days,” May added. “We won’t know the full extent of the damage until the storm has passed.”

Update planned

Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May will host a conference call at 9 a.m. Thursday morning to provide an update on storm damage, outages and restoration times.

In a text message early Wednesday afternoon, Entergy warned customers across southeast Louisiana, including the New Orleans metropolitan area, that power outages were expected over the next 24 hours. “Entergy crews will respond quickly and safely once wind speeds are below 30 mph,” the text message said.

About 9,000 homes in Bywater, Marigny and 7th Ward were without power for about two hours Tuesday night. Entergy said the cause of the outage was still under investigation, but initial indications suggested it was a circuit breaker failure. Early Wednesday morning, there were also power outages to 6,000 homes in Metairie and another 1,700 homes in the West Bank, both unrelated to the storm. Both areas had power restored within a few hours.

The cone of Hurricane Francine is currently moving rapidly through the state and is expected to cause widespread power outages.

In the southwest part of the state, the Southwest Louisiana Electric Membership Corporation, which has 118,000 customers in eight parishes, said about 2,500 customers were without power as of 7:45 p.m.

Southeast gives way

The Lafayette Utilities System, which has 73,000 customers, was expected to lose power to 60 customers.

Other power companies experiencing outages included Dixie Electric and Washington St. Tammany Cooperatives, which left a total of about 21,000 customers without power.

All regional power companies have said they have deployed employees and contractors to staging areas to help restore power to affected areas once the storm passes.

This is a developing story, please check back later for updates.