Following Friday night’s storms, a number of area residents remain without power. For North Arkansas Electric Cooperative, full restoration of power is expected to be a multi-day event.
Cooperative CEO Mel Coleman says Friday was one of those occasions in which straight line winds can do more damage to power poles than a tornado.
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Personnel have been working throughout the night to get power restored to its members as soon as possible with assistance from Craighead Electric Cooperative in Jonesboro. According to NAEC, power has returned to nearly 7,500 of its members. As of 1:20 p.m. Saturday, the cooperative still had 1,160 outages from members served by the Mountain Home and Salem offices.
Coleman says with the progress that has been made, there’s still a lot of work to be completed.
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NAEC personnel so far have found seven broken poles in the Mountain Home district and two broken poles in the Salem district. One of the largest outages remaining was from a broken three-phase pole at Howard Creek out of Midway. A crew finished replacing it around 8 a.m. Saturday and restored power to 800 members. The largest outage remaining now is affecting more than 760 members in the Gamaliel area. Crews are working on it, but there is no estimated time of restoration.
Members can report downed lines by contacting the cooperative at 870-895-3221, but phone lines may be jammed. Coleman says if a dangerous situation with a downed line is observed, call 911.
Several area customers of Entergy Arkansas also remain without power. At 1:20, there were 17 outages in Baxter County, 172 in Marion County, 122 in Izard County, one in Searcy County, 280 in Stone County and three in Boone County.
While power has been restored to several area residents in Southern Missouri, several more continue to go through an outage. According to White River Valley Electric Cooperative, crews have been working through the night to restore your service, and many broken poles have needed to be replaced. At noon, power was still out to 530 members in Ozark County, 115 in Douglas County and 10 in Taney County.
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