County recovers after storms
Entergy crews restore power
Entergy Arkansas Inc. had reduced its outages in Garland County to fewer than 2,400 customers by late afternoon Wednesday, a little more than 24 hours after severe thunderstorms left more than 11,000 residents without power.
Greg Asbell, Entergy Arkansas Inc.’s regional manager for customer service, said early Wednesday that utility crews had reduced the number of outages from slightly more than 11,000 late Tuesday afternoon to 4,310 customers and 111 cases of trouble by 8:45 a.m. Wednesday.
Asbell said 2,382 customers were still without power by 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, and it will be today before power can be restored to all customers.
“We got quite a few customers back on last night, but we’ve got a lot of broken poles and a lot of wire on the ground,” Asbell said earlier in the day.
He said additional repairmen from other electrical companies arrived in town Tuesday and Wednesday to help with the restoration.
“We’re still hoping we’ll get the majority of customers back on through tonight (Wednesday). I think we said that would
be by 8 p.m. Wednesday, but it’s really going to depend on some of the additional scouting that we’re doing. We’re trying to get everyone back on that can take power sometime today, if we can,” he said.
Asbell said restoration in some parts of the areas that sustained the most damage — Lake Hamilton Drive, Long Island Drive, Grand Isle Drive, Lookout Point and Central Terrace — could carry over into today.
“I had a conversation with the guys this morning, and I think we’ll know more about those particular areas later in the day, once they get in there and start setting poles and picking up wire. I know the county is trying to do some clearing of trees that are in the roads, so it depends on exactly what they find when they get in there as to how quickly we’ll be able to do that,” he said.
In addition to the harder hit area south of the city, Asbell said there were numerous scattered outages in the county.
“We’ve got a lot of isolated areas where it might just be a transformer fuse switch that opened, or a line fuse switch that may have 50 or so people out of power, something like that, but we’ve got a lot of those cases, and sometimes those are more time consuming. Sometimes we can clear a tree off a line or circuit and be able to restore 1,000 to 2,000 customers,” he said.
Interim City Manager Bill Burrough said crews for the city of Hot Springs were checking choke points in creeks Wednesday morning to make sure they were cleared, along with other areas with drainage problems, in preparation of any rain events that may come later.
“It looks like we’ve got good weather today, but after any rain event, we go through a series of checkpoints and drainage areas that we know are potential problems and clean them out,” he said.
Burrough said that after the storm hit Tuesday, there were 19 trees down across city streets, and all but eight of those were cleared Tuesday afternoon and night.
“Those eight still have power lines in them and they are in various areas, including Trivista Right, Summer and Oaklawn, East St. Louis and Indiana, Pecan Street, Greenwood, and Lake Hamilton Drive. They are in areas that we can’t get to until the power lines are removed,” he said.
Burrough said the only other damage in the city was a floor-to-ceiling window that was blown out of his office during the height of the storm shortly after noon Tuesday.