More than two weeks after an underground transformer explosion knocked out power to nearly 1,000 customers, forced a hotel evacuation and sent thick, acrid smoke billowing up above Bourbon Street, Entergy New Orleans executives said they cannot determine the cause of the July 4 incident.
“Because of the fire significantly damaging the equipment, we’re unable to determine specifically the cause of the issue in that area,” Dan Calamari, Entergy’s vice president of reliability operations, told a New Orleans City Council committee on Wednesday.
Calamari said routine inspections of the utility’s transformer vaults — the below-ground concrete bunkers that house its electrical equipment in the French Quarter and Central Business District — turned up no sign of trouble before the late-night incident.
Entergy conducts “end-to-end” inspections of all its underground vaults in the area twice a year, Calamari said, performing simulations and other tests to inspect the electrical components inside the vaults…