Power restored after storm
Entergy Arkansas Inc. crews worked through the night and into the early morning hours Thursday to restore power to several thousand customers in the Hot Springs area, as its Hydro Operations division worked to maintain lake levels, following a stormy Halloween night.
At the peak of the outages at around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Entergy had about 50 outage cases that impacted just over 3,500 customers, Jim Garland, Entergy’s regional customer service manager, said in an email Thursday.
“Our crews worked through the night and at 5:30 this morning they had restored power to all but a few customers. The rest of the customers’ power was restored by midmorning,” Garland said.
Another weather-related outage was reported at around
11 a.m. Thursday, and impacted about 750 customers in the area between Albert Pike and Hobson Avenue. The outage was caused by storm-damaged equipment, according to Garland, who said the power was restored to the area at around
12:30 p.m. Thursday. Entergy issued a high-water notification early Thursday morning after the releases from Remmel Dam reached 30,000 cubic feet of water per second, the trigger point for high-flow notifications.
As a result, the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for the Ouachita River below Remmel Dam early Thursday morning due to the elevated releases brought about by the heavy rainfall.
The flash flood warning, issued by the Weather Service at 3:40 a.m. Thursday, was in effect until 9:45 a.m.
“This is a routine high water event which will result in lowland flooding along the Ouachita River in Hot Spring County,” the warning said.
Around 7 a.m. Thursday, Entergy said in an email that the releases from Remmel Dam had dropped below 30,000 cfs, and no additional significant rainfall was expected for its watershed area.
“Both lakes Hamilton and Catherine stayed within their normal pool levels and are currently stable,” the email said.
“We will begin the annual winter drawdown of both lakes throughout today as originally planned. The lakes are expected to lower at a rate of approximately 6 inches per day until we reach the 5-foot drawdown for this winter season.”
In an earlier email, Entergy said its plan was to slowly continue to lower the levels of both lakes as the runoff from the creeks caused the lake levels to continue to slowly rise. “Once we stabilize the lake levels we will begin the annual winter drawdown of both lakes later today, as it was scheduled to start Nov. 1,” the earlier email said.
Interim City Manager Bill Burrough said the only report of significant property damage in the city of Hot Springs was at the Arkansas Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo on Whittington Avenue.
“We did have an issue with a loss of power around noon today on Albert Pike from Richard to Airport Road. We recently wired most all traffic signals for generator capability and today was the first day we actually deployed them,” Burrough said in an email to the newspaper.
Burrough said the city connected generators to signals at Richard and Albert Pike and at Airport Road and Albert Pike. “This allowed the signals to work until power was restored, saving the need to have officers enforcing traffic control. We have 43 traffic signals inside the city that we can connect to a generator if need be.”
Jamie Bridges, owner and manager of the Alligator Farm, said a concrete block wall around a pen was damaged by a tree that was blown over a little before midnight Wednesday.
“No animals were hurt and nothing got out,” Bridges said, adding that they were fortunate the tree fell the way it did, and did not damage any of the popular tourist attraction’s buildings.
Bridges said the Alligator Farm is currently operating on winter hours, and is only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Bridges said it would “definitely” be open for business as usual today.