Entergy Arkansas reduces the number of customers without electricity to 5,500

Little Rock, Arkansas – In regard to returning power to customers, Entergy Arkansas has made great progress.

At a peak of 56,000, Entergy said on Tuesday that 5,500 individuals were still without electricity.

“About 90% have been restored,” a spokesperson for Entergy, Brandi Hinkle, said. “Now we are down to those very difficult cases where it’s perhaps in a very densely populated area, the damage is in a backyard or alleyways where we have not been able to pull out trucks.”

According to Hinkle, there hasn’t been a scarcity of tools or manual labor.

According to Hinkle, Entergy has employed specialized machinery, including bulldozers, tracked vehicles, and excavators to assist in power restoration.

“We have even had some of our linemen who have had to physically carry wire and power poles into those areas, and those power poles are very heavy, and they are not easy to manipulate,” said Hinkle.

Power pole installation is a task that typically takes Entergy personnel two hours to perform, according to Hinkle, but because of the extent of the damage done, the task now takes the crews eight to ten hours to do.

“Oftentimes the issue is maybe caused blocks away, miles away, so we have to take care of bigger issues further down the line before we can get power back to individual properties,” said Hinkle. “But just know that we are working hard, we are working around the clock, and we will work until the last of the lights are on.”

Maybe experiencing more severe weather Tuesday night, Hinkle stated that Entergy had already dispatched employees to potential regions for severe weather.

According to Hinkle, Entergy’s top focus is safety.

“We are keeping a close eye on the weather. We use both local and national meteorologists to help us determine where we should be.”

Further power disruptions could possibly result from severe weather.

“There is also a possibility for additional power outages not just from wind and things of that nature, but the fact there is still a lot of debris out there on the ground that the wind can then pick up and cause additional damage to our system.”

Between Little Rock, Jacksonville, Sherwood, and Wynne, over 1,500 utility poles, 435 transformers, and roughly 2,000 spans of wire were damaged or destroyed as a result of the storm on Friday.

“We understand the tremendous hardship this storm has placed on our customers, employees, and communities,” said Ventrell Thompson, vice president of customer service. “Our crews are working around the clock to restore power so our communities can begin the rebuilding process.”

Due to the harm done to their house or place of business, Entergy estimates that 1,600 clients have not yet received their power back.

Entergy personnel have been working 16-hour shifts, according to Hinkle.