UPDATE AT 8:10 MONDAY MORNING:
Power has been restored to all North Arkansas Electric Customers served by the Norfork Substation. Repairs have been finished and power was restored shortly after 8 Monday morning.
ORIGINAL STORY:
Over 1,300 North Arkansas Electric Cooperative customers served by the Norfork Substation are still without power following a lightning strike Sunday night. At the peak of the outage, over 4,000 customers were affected. The Norfork Substation is located below Norfork Dam.
Crews were able to get the regulator replaced at the Norfork Substation by about 10:30 Sunday night but it may still be midday Monday before power is restored to the affected customers due to damage from the fire. CEO Mel Coleman says the fire damaged grounding wires buried around the substation and equipment will have to be brought in to dig up the damaged wires so they can be replaced.
The co-op first reported the outage at 5:19 Sunday evening, indicating customers of the substations at Norfork, Sycamore Springs and Pineville were affected. They were able to restore power to customers served by the Sycamore Springs Substation by 7:30 Sunday night and the Pineville Substation by 8:30. Crews were able to restore power just over 500 more customers east of the dam by 10:15 Sunday night.
(NAEC crews replacing the damaged regulator)
The total number of customers affected is listed at 1,376 as of early Monday morning.
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