Storms knock out power
More than 1,000 customers affected
A storm system that swept through Hot Springs overnight Saturday damaged homes and caused power outages on the city’s north side.
The severe thunderstorms left a trail of damage through Hot Springs’ historic Park Avenue district, knocking over trees and causing more than 1,000 outages in that part of town.
Meteorologist Jeff Hood of the National Weather Service in North Little Rock said the storm system hit Hot Springs around
midnight Friday and lasted about an hour, dropping two tenths of an inch of rain and bringing gusts of wind between 35 and 40 mph.
Jim Garland, Entergy Arkansas Inc.’ manager of region customer service, said that about 1,055 customers were out of power in the neighborhood just west of the 750 block of Park Avenue as of 6 a.m. Saturday, after the storm locked out the neighborhood’s circuit.
Other outages in the neighborhood were more sporadic. According to an Entergy lineman at the scene, three trees and one branch had fallen onto power lines in the area, causing outages that he and other linemen were working to restore around 8:30 a.m. Saturday.
Hood said that the wind speeds, which were only reported by National Weather Service at the Hot Springs Memorial Field reporting station, could have been closer to 50 mph in the Park Avenue neighborhood.
One of the trees that fell in the neighborhood was a towering sweet gum that landed atop a storage building at 218 Eddie St. and extended backward into the street. The tree crushed the structure’s roof and two of the three cars parked in its driveway.
Danielle Russell said she was planning on eventually turning the storage building into a living space. Russell’s mother, Brenda Pipher, said that whether the tree helped or harmed her daughter’s renovation efforts depended on one’s perception of the situation.
In the storage building’s driveway sat two cars that belong to Pipher — a Chevy Corolla, which she said was “crushed,” and a Toyota RAV4, which she said was “mostly crushed.” A third car in the driveway, also a RAV4 that belonged to Pipher, was dented from the tree’s limbs making contact with the driver’s side.
Pipher said that the two cars that were crushed by the tree will go to the junk yard, but that she will keep the RAV4 that was not crushed.
By 9 a.m. Saturday, the portion of the sweet gum that had fallen into Eddie Street had been cleared out of the road for traffic. Entergy and Resort Television Cable workers were working to restore service.
Garland said that, as of 10:30 a.m. Saturday, about 50-60 outages remained in the neighborhood. Power was fully restored to the neighborhood by 3 p.m.