Storms leave trees down, power out

Sarah and Brian Chunn woke up Friday night to the sound of a crash.

Just outside their 8-yearold daughter’s window, a poplar tree had bent and broken in the thunderstorms crisscrossing Arkansas over the weekend, Sarah Chunn said.

Chunn said said the first thing she and Brian did was check on their four children — ages 2, 4, 5 and 8 — before seeing what had caused the sound.

“The storm was just so loud,” Sarah Chunn said. “We could hear the thunder and the hail outside.”

Looking out their daughter’s window, Sarah Chunn

said she could see that a large branch — several inches in diameter — had fallen from the tree next door to their Little Rock home.

“At that point, we could just see leaves below the window. We didn’t know the extent of the damage yet.”

In the morning light, Sarah Chunn said she could see that the tree had not just lost a few branches — a downed power line, two shattered windshields and more, still unknown damage were beneath the leaves.

The Chunn family was one of about 63,485 Entergy customers who lost power during the storms Friday night and Saturday morning, with the height of the power failures occurring about 5:30 a.m., utility spokesman Kerri Case said.

By 6 p.m. Saturday, the statewide number had dropped to about 32,000. The bulk of the power failures were concentrated in Pulaski County. Affected areas included portions of west and south Little Rock as well as communities just to the city’s south.

For some Arkansas residents, including those in Pulaski County, electricity was estimated to return as late as this afternoon, according to Entergy Arkansas’ online outage map. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service warned of high heat index values across much of the state Saturday and today.

“We’ve called in approximately 300 line workers from out of state to work the outages,” Case said, noting that the workers are primarily coming from Louisiana and Texas. Some were set to arrive Saturday afternoon while the remainder would be on-site today, she added.

The workers were tentatively set to focus their restoration efforts on Russellville, Little Rock and Stuttgart — the cities Case said had the most storm damage.

“Everywhere that we can, we’ve given customers an estimated time of restoration. In some areas, we are not able to give a time estimate yet,” Case said.

Entergy estimated noon today as the restoration time for those in Pulaski County, but it said that time “could change as all damage assessments are completed or if other storm activity results in additional outages.”

The fallen limb outside the Chunns’ house on Shumate Drive left a live wire popping outside the front door, preventing them from approaching the damaged vehicles and leaving the family of six stranded at home.

“I have neighbors bringing me groceries and things, and they keep asking me if they can come help get the tree off, but we can’t do anything yet,” she said. “I’m just happy everyone is OK. All of our stuff we can replace.”

National Weather Service teams were set to survey the storm damage in Little Rock on Saturday afternoon.

Teams determined earlier Saturday that storm damage in Pope County was the result of straight-line winds up to 85 mph. In Russellville, the glass front doors of a Fred’s discount store were blown in and several trees were uprooted.

According to the National Park Service, the Buffalo Point area of the Buffalo National River also had “extensive damage” to a campground, cabins, a restaurant and trails.

Minor injuries to campers were reported at the north Arkansas site after a storm hit around 1 a.m., park spokesman Caven Clark said. Additional information regarding the number of people hurt wasn’t immediately available.

“This entire area is currently being evacuated and will be closed for at least 72 hours to allow for emergency personnel and park staff to assess damage and begin repairs,” the Park Service said in a statement around 9 a.m. Saturday.

Little Rock said Saturday morning on Twitter more than 40 city workers were clearing trees. Their work was set to continue through 5 p.m., and officials noted that the city would “reassess needs Sunday.”

Austin Kellerman, news director at Little Rock station KARK, said on social media the storms affected the station’s transmission tower and signal. The NBC affiliate was transmitting Saturday on a backup generator.

A large electrical transmission tower was also “blown over” in Pulaski County, according to a storm report.