Nearly 78% of residents in East Baton Rouge, Livingston and Ascension parishes remain without power Monday, August 30, and officials with Entergy and Cleco—the two major utilities that service the area—say they cannot yet estimate how long it will be before electricity is restored.

“Based on historical restoration times, customers in the direct path of a Category 4 hurricane can experience outages up to three weeks,” Entergy says in its 2 p.m. update. “While 90% of customers will be restored sooner, customers in the hardest-hit area should plan for the possibility of experiencing extended power outages.”

As of 2:30 p.m., 70% of East Baton Rouge Parish homes and businesses were without power, compared to 75% in Livingston Parish and 87% in Ascension Parish.

As frustrating as those percentages are, the numbers are far worse in the Greater New Orleans area, where 92% of Orleans Parish and 95% of Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes are without power, according to poweroutage.us.

Public Service Commission Chairman Dr. Craig Greene says first responders, U.S. National Guard troops and utility workers spent the day trying to assess the damage in order to come up with a game plan for getting as many customers on line as quickly as possible.

“But the first priority is getting the 51 hospitals that are now running on generator power up first,” he says.

To read the full story from our sister publication, Greater Baton Rouge Business Report, click here.