Power restored to most
Entergy Arkansas Inc. said it would be late Tuesday before the outages caused by Sunday’s storm were resolved, after having originally estimated that repairs would be completed by 6 a. m. Monday.
Greg Asbell, regional manager of customer service for Entergy, said Tuesday afternoon that power would hopefully be restored by 10 p. m. Tuesday to all the customers who could take power.
By 3: 30 p. m., service had been restored to all but 40 customers, and repair crews were still working 12 cases of trouble, Asbell said.
At the peak of the outage Sunday, Entergy crews were working 96 cases, representing 7,600 customers, he said.
“I think we ran into more problems ( than anticipated.) As we scouted the areas, and with the debris and problems that we were encountering, I think we found more problems than we thought existed.”
The largest trouble area Tuesday morning was on Fox Pass Cutoff, where crews were working to replace two broken utility poles and downed wire that affected 120 customers.
“Sometimes, if you have a lot of customers out with just a few
cases, you can get those customers on pretty quickly. But in this case, we had a lot of customers with a lot of cases,” Asbell said.
“As a result of that, and finding more damage as we did our assessment, that pushed the restoration time to midnight Monday, then to around noon Tuesday and it looks like it will be later today before everyone that can take power will be restored.”
Asbell said several crews were called in from other cities to help with the restoration and primary damage was due to broken poles, downed wire and “lots of trees.”
“We hope to have the majority of people restored by the time they read the paper in the morning. There may be some that didn’t make it, but we are really humping it right now trying to get that done. We’re shooting for 10 p. m.,” he said.
He said homes and businesses that had damaged meter loops could not receive power until repairs were made.
“We’ll probably be doing reconnects for several days,” he said.
“I realize it’s difficult ( for people), and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the Entergy customers being as patient as they are because it’s hot and they are ready for service. We’d like to get them service as quickly as we possibly can. We definitely haven’t forgotten about them, and we’re working as quickly as we can for them.”