Morgan City, La. -
Morgan City, La. - After sweating it out in her apartment all morning, Ernestine Bell found cool relief at the Morgan City Municipal Auditorium.
"I mean it is burning up," said Bell. "It's got to be at least 98 to 100."
Other hot Morgan City residents joined Bell at the temporary shelter, opened as workers raced to repair the damage caused by an explosion at the Joseph Cefalu Steam Plant.
A transformer at the plant blew up Tuesday evening, knocking out power to 12,000 people.
"This is the main power transformer that is taking electricity off the grid and putting into the city of Morgan City," says Mayor Tim Matte. "So we lost that source of electricity. We were generating at the time but the generator got knocked off as a result of the fire so we've attempted to bring the generator back up."
Those attempts didn't work overnight and the city implemented a dusk to dawn curfew. As the sun came up, the temperature climbed. And still, there was no power, no streetlights and no AC.
"This is probably the worst time of the year that something like this could happen," says Matte. "We're particularly concerned about our elderly residents. Give them the opportunity to have a little cooling at the municipal auditorium. It has generator power so we're running the generators there to be able to run the air conditioners so we can at least give people a little relief from the heat of the day."
With no power to run the cash registers or cook, many businesses remained closed Wednesday. Restaurant owners scrambled to save what they could.
A small generator ran outside Newtalia Cafe where Stormy Ruiz watched her profits literally melt away.
"Every hour, I have to switch freezers," says Ruiz. "All this stuff in coolers, I put in ice chests what I could save. This is my having to switch every hour from freezer to freezer to make sure it stays frozen in there."
Nearly 22 hours after the explosion, crews slowly restored power to the city. Matte says workers turned on small areas at a time to not overload the system.
