Downtown LR hit by power loss

A problem at a Little Rock substation cut power to a large swath of downtown Tuesday night, an official said.

The outage included the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette office on East Capitol Avenue, delaying production and affecting the quality of images in today’s edition.

The downtown power outage began around 8:40 p.m. Tues-

day, darkening streets and high-rise office buildings in the downtown area. The power was still out as of 11:30 p.m. Power was out from Scott Street west to Broadway and from the Arkansas River south to Sixth Street.

An Entergy Arkansas repair crew had not determined the cause of the outage late Tuesday night, but it stemmed from a problem at a substation behind Little Rock City Hall, said company spokesman Kerri Case. That substation, identified as the Garland substation, feeds power to the downtown area, she said.

Case originally reported

that the outage was because of a problem at the Gaines Street substation, but later said the problem was isolated to the Garland substation.

Case said about 11 p.m. that she could not provide an estimated time for power restoration. She said multiple Entergy employees were at the Garland substation working to locate the problem.

“Until you know what it is, you can’t do anything about it,” she said.

Case said she did not have a clear count on the number of customers affected by the outage.

Traffic lights, street lights and high-rise office buildings stood in darkness Tuesday night as vehicles drove carefully though downtown streets.