Numbers improve for County's weary flooding victims

“Normal” may take a good while.

But the numbers are definitely trending in a positive direction for storm-punched Orange County.

Sunday evening Entergy reported that there were 10,800 electrical customer outages remaining after Tropical Storm Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain on Southeast Texas last week.

That’s down from 26,000 on Saturday.

And the reservoir level at Toledo Bend has dropped so that the required spillway release has been cut to Step 1, the first and most minimal, of 12 Steps.

That should help reduce Sabine River flooding.

According to Entergy’s website, the 77630 and 77632 zip codes, which cover the central and northeastern parts of the county had about 2,000 and 1,400 electrical outages each at 10:15 p.m. Sunday. And 77611, which is mostly Bridge City, had only 20.

However, that left 77662, the western side of the county that includes Rose City, Vidor and Pine Forest, with 7,400 outages.

Entergy says two substations are down in Orange County and the company’s timeline to have all outages repaired is Sept. 11-13.

Meanwhile, the reservoir level at Toledo Bend was at 172.6 feet at 10:45 p.m. Sunday, and five floodgates were open one foot each for a release of 5,000 cubic feet per second.

Downriver, the Sabine River was at 30.88 feet at Deweyville at 9:45 p.m. Sunday after cresting at 31.6 feet Saturday. The National Weather Service was calling for another crest at 31.3 feet Tuesday.

At Orange, the Sabine River was at 7.78 feet Sunday at 10:15 p.m. It was expected to crest at 7.9 feet and stay around the 7.9 level until early Wednesday.

The flood level of the Sabine River is 24 feet at Deweyville, 4 feet at Orange.