Outages, structure fire affect west GC

The residential areas surrounding Marion Anderson Road in western Garland County experienced outages and a fully involved structure fire Friday night.

The outages, which lasted into the early morning hours on Saturday, were the result of a vehicle that left the roadway and struck a utility pole off Marion Anderson Road in the vicinity of the South Moore Road intersection.

Customers received a text around 6:49 p.m. Friday notifying them of the outage, with an initial repair estimate of 10 p.m. A later text put the restoration time at 1 a.m. Saturday; service was restored around 12:30 a.m. Saturday.

According to Jim Garland, Entergy Arkansas Inc.’s regional customer service manager, the broken utility pole caused an outage that affected about 1,000 customers in the area. He said it took Entergy repairmen two to three hours to restore power once at the scene.

The structure fire, which occurred in a single-story residence at 310 Walkway Drive near the area affected by the outage, began shortly before 11 p.m. Friday. The fire’s cause is unknown, according to 70 West Fire Chief Autumn Carlisle.

Carlisle said Saturday that 70 West deployed two engines and several personnel responded to the fire after it was called in at 10:59 p.m. Friday. She said the wood frame structure was unoccupied at the time of the response, and that the flames were reaching through its roof when firefighters arrived.

The responding 70 West firefighters contacted Piney Fire Department for mutual aid. Piney sent two personnel, who were “quickly released” after the fire was brought under control.

Carlisle said the structure was a total loss.