New storms add to state's power failures

Entergy says 12,000 in dark; flash-flood warning issued

NWA Democrat-Gazette/J.T. WAMPLER Greenland police officer Clayton Wagnon drives through flood water after the west fork of the White River forced closure of U.S. 71 Sunday June 23, 2019. Much of Northwest Arkansas was under a flood watch most of the day Sunday due to continued heavy rainfall.
NWA Democrat-Gazette/J.T. WAMPLER Greenland police officer Clayton Wagnon drives through flood water after the west fork of the White River forced closure of U.S. 71 Sunday June 23, 2019. Much of Northwest Arkansas was under a flood watch most of the day Sunday due to continued heavy rainfall.

Utility provider Entergy was forced to deal with another round of power failures on Sunday just days after powerful storms knocked out power for thousands of energy customers in Little Rock and other parts of Arkansas.

The number of power failures across Arkansas rose over 12,000 Sunday afternoon, a day after it had dropped to fewer than 7,000 as crews continued to repair damage from a storm Wednesday evening.

"We had it down to 6,000 at one point," Entergy spokesman David Lewis said Sunday. "Then we had the storms this morning and then the [failures] we are dealing with now. I would say about three-quarters of the power outages are new outages and the rest are from Wednesday."

Storms moving across parts of western and northern Arkansas prompted several severe thunderstorm, flash-flood and tornado warnings on Sunday morning, the National Weather Service in North Little Rock said.

Shortly after midnight, the weather service in North Little Rock issued a flash-food warning for portions of Scott County as a storm capable of producing heavy rain moved east into the state from Oklahoma. The warning was later expanded to include parts of Logan and Yell counties.

Forecasters estimated nearly 8 inches of rain fell over 12 hours in the area. The Poteau River at Cauthron, in Scott County, rose nearly 10 feet in "just a few hours," the weather service said.

The weather service also issued several tornado warnings Sunday morning for parts of western and north-central Arkansas as the system moved north.

"It's one of those situations where we're kind of looking at a double threat today between the severe weather potential and the flash-flood potential," Cooper said.

Last week, winds of up to 75 mph uprooted trees, downed 131 power poles and left 82,000 customers without electricity across the state.

Entergy Arkansas requested 1,700 additional workers from Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, and contract companies, to aid in the cleanup, bringing the total number of boots on the ground to 2,100, Lewis said.

"Most of them are still here, which means we have more staff then we will normally be so we should be able to get this under control pretty quickly," Lewis said.

The storms on Wednesday caused significant damage to Entergy's utility system, Lewis said.

"We had 131 broken poles," Lewis said. "It is a big undertaking to repair one pole. Plus we got the hardware, conductors and power lines that are attached to those poles."

Lewis said they hoped that power would be restored by 10 p.m. Sunday, but the new round of storms has made the situation fluid.

Information for this article was provided by Josh Snyder of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

State Desk on 06/24/2019

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