Entergy restores power in area over weekend

Entergy Arkansas Inc. worked into Saturday evening to restore power to hundreds of customers who lost service during Friday night's severe thunderstorms, a spokesman for the utility said Sunday.

Garland County saw two lines of thunderstorms pass through Friday night, bringing about strong winds, heavy rain, lightning and a tornado warning.

The storms, at their peak, caused about 500 outages countywide, including five broken utility poles in various locations throughout the county, Jim Garland, Entergy Arkansas Inc.'s manager of region customer service, said in an email to The Sentinel-Record.

Garland said that the majority of the smaller, scattered outages were caused by vegetation damage to power lines.

Garland said that Entergy was able to secure about 10 additional contract linemen and additional vegetation crews from outside the area to assist in restoring power. By about 5 p.m. Saturday, all storm-related outages within the county had been resolved.

Entergy fixed another non storm-related outages at the 2000 block of Central Avenue Saturday. The outage was caused by a driver hitting a utility pole within the block. Two poles were damaged, causing two lanes to be blocked for most of the day. Garland said that the impacted "a few customers."

"We appreciate the public's cooperation and safety during the restoration efforts," Garland said in the email.

Local on 03/27/2017

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