Slidell sits on the wrong side of the lake for a hurricane. Tucked against the eastern shore
of Lake Pontchartrain, with Lake Borgne and the Rigolets just beyond, the city catches storm
surge funneled up the Pearl and through Bayou Bonfouca — water that can travel miles inland.
Much of the city is low-lying and flat, and large parts of it sit in FEMA flood zones, so a
storm here means both wind and water.
The other thing to know is the grid. Most of Slidell and St. Tammany Parish is served by
Cleco Power, not Entergy — the Northshore
runs on a different network than New Orleans across the causeway. Some rural pockets are on
Washington-St. Tammany Electric Cooperative.
Either way, the lines that feed the Northshore are long, tree-lined, and exposed.
That exposure is why Northshore outages drag. When a hurricane shreds Cleco’s
distribution network — the poles and lines
that run down every street — restoration becomes a multi-week effort, and that’s exactly what
Slidell lived through after Ida in 2021. Once the power’s out, sewer lift stations and home
sump pumps go with it, right when the ground is already saturated.
A permanently installed standby generator sidesteps all of it. It detects the outage and
restores power automatically — usually within seconds — and runs for as long as the grid is
down.
See how installation works →