An outage affected nearly 12,000 Entergy Arkansas customers in Hot Springs just before the stroke of midnight Thursday night, leaving a large swath of homes and businesses in the dark to start the new year.
A staff writer for The Sentinel-Record reported that, as of 11:30 p.m. Thursday, all of downtown Hot Springs was without power, and Entergy's online outage map indicated the outage stretched as far east as Cloud 9 RV Park and as far west as Cedarglade Road.
J. Paul Brewster, customer service manager for Entergy Arkansas, said a crossarm on a transmission line was damaged, causing the outages.
"All services have been restored," Brewster said at around noon Friday.
Brewster said there was no obvious cause, but it "appeared to be lightning-related."
The outage forced a number of city residents to change their New Year's Eve plans. Spencer's Corner, which had planned to stage its first-ever ball drop, had to cancel due to the outage.