UPDATE:
An additional 115 linemen have been requested to help restore power to customers who lost service as the result of Wednesday's storm, Greg Asbell, Entergy Arkansas Inc.'s regional manager of customer service, told The Sentinel-Record late Wednesday night.
Asbell said it may be Thursday night before power is restored to most of the customers who lost service but suffered no other damage that would prevent their power from being turned back on.
The number of outages peaked at around 8,500, representing around 90 cases of trouble in Garland County.
Asbell said wind, lightning and fallen trees caused most of the damage to the electric system.
The damage includes broken poles and X-arms, transformers, and wire on the ground.
As of 9 p.m., Asbell said Entergy crews have restored power to 3,200 customers, leaving around 5,300 customers without power.
"We have requested an additional 115 linemen, who will be arriving tomorrow to assist in the restoration effort. We estimate that most customers that can receive power will be restored around 11 p.m. Thursday," he said.
By 10:00 p.m., Entergy had restored 5,000 customers from the peak of 8,500. Asbell said at that time that 3,500 remained without power.
ORIGINAL STORY:
More than 8,000 Entergy Arkansas Inc. customers in Garland County were among the 42,000 left without power statewide Wednesday evening after a line of severe thunderstorms moved across Arkansas, bringing high winds that downed numerous trees.
Greg Asbell, Entergy's regional manager of customer service, said the largest outage areas in Garland County were north of the city along Highway 7 in the Mountain Valley and Fountain Lake areas; Highway 270 west in the Piney and Crystal Hill Road areas; and the Old Bear Road area around Royal.
Around 6 p.m., a large outage occurred along the west end of the King Expressway that affected more than 3,000 customers.
Numerous smaller outages were reported throughout the county, according to Entergy's online outage map.
Asbell said the Piney area outage that left more than 2,000 customers without power was due to a piece of conductor that fell in the Fairwood neighborhood near Mountain Pine Road and caused a breaker at the substation on Weston Road to go out.
"One of our servicemen found the conductor down and it will require a crew to pick all that up. In the meantime, he'll try to do some switching, which will also take some time, but he's going to try to do that. Once he's performed the switching, power will be restored to quite a few customers," Asbell said. He said the conductor probably fell due to high winds and lightning.
Hot Springs Baptist Church, which is located on Weston Road, posted a message on its Facebook page that Wednesday night services had been canceled.
"Due to an areawide power outage including the church, we will not have activities at Hot Springs Baptist Church tonight," the message said.
Asbell said he had heard reports of trees being on power lines but had not heard any reports of lines being broken or downed.
"We're out there right now working," he said shortly after 5 p.m. "We're driving and assessing the conditions and if we can get something back on, we're trying to very carefully to get it on."
Portions of Garland County were placed under a severe thunderstorm warning, along with portions of Clark and Hot Spring counties, until 6 p.m. Wednesday after National Weather Service radar indicated a line of severe thunderstorms capable of producing damaging winds in excess of 60 mph.
The storms were located along a line extending from 2 miles east of Hot Springs to 5 miles northwest of Okalona, moving southeast at 35 mph.
The damage included a tree down over Highway 227, reported by Arkansas State Police, the Weather Service said at 4:46 p.m.
Other areas where trees were reported down included the 1300 block of Highway 7 north, where power lines were down and the roadway was reportedly blocked, and the 500 block of Laser Street in Hot Springs.
Local on 07/24/2014