By Tia Lyons
Staff Writer
EL DORADO — Severe storms rumbled through El Dorado and Union County Thursday evening, bringing straight-line winds and powerful gusts that toppled trees and downed power lines that left thousands of customers without electricity.
Bill Luther, customer service manager for Entergy’s El Dorado office, said the outages peaked at 10,400 at 9 p.m. on Thursday in Union County.
The number was down to 6,000 customers by 1:30 p.m. on Friday.
Luther said the outages could last for multiple days for some customers.
Around the state, 138,000 outages were reported. Entergy called in an additional 1,200 workers to help tackle the issue of restoring power to customers, and Luther said 255 of those additional line workers were assigned to Union County.
He said Entergy was still assessing the damage around the county on Friday with assistance from 18 scouts that were coming in from Texas.
“We should have a lot of those (6,000) restored within 24 hours. It’s going to be a multi-day outage. We’ve got scouts that are going to walk the downed lines and identify all of the problems,” he said.
“It’s too early to tell when we’ll have all power restored until we’ve had the opportunity to complete a damage assessment. It’s hard to estimate right now. We’ll probably be able to start giving estimates (tonight),” Luther reported.
He said the outages were “scattered evenly” throughout the county.
Outage reports from Union County started coming in at around 6 p.m. on Thursday, Luther said, noting that the storms had struck western Arkansas about an hour earlier.
The primary cause of the outages was trees falling across power lines, he said.
“And when the trees fall, the (utility) poles break. Straight-line winds can came in and wreaked havoc all across the county,” Luther said. “There wasn’t much rain at all. The wind came from out of the north and laid all this stuff down.”
El Dorado Mayor Frank Hash said public works crews worked through the night Thursday and all day Friday to remove that had blocked streets all around the city.
The work will continue throughout the weekend, Hash said, noting that as Entergy crews de-energize downed electrical lines, city workers will follow clearing debris and opening up city streets.
The mayor said a tree fell in his own yard as a result of the storms.
El Dorado Fire Chief Chad Mosby said the fire department received numerous calls throughout the city about fallen trees and grass fires that were sparked by live electrical lines that knocked down by trees.
“We had to prioritize calls, and we were going to the fires first and actual live wires that were on the ground,” Mosby said.
Firefighters also responded to calls about trees damaging two houses on Miles, he said. No injuries were reported.
Mosby said the bulk of the calls came in at approximately 6:30 p.m. and began tapering off at 7:30 p.m.
The El Dorado Police Department handled similar calls throughout the evening while dealing with its own issues, said Capt. Kevin Holt, public information officer.
Holt said storms created problems with the 911 emergency dispatch system, forcing the department to send the calls to an alternate location.
“We have a backup generators, and there was no problem with our responses, but we had to transfer our calls to another answer point before the system was brought back up,” Holt said.
Union County Sheriff Mike McGough said reports about fallen trees kept sheriff’s deputies hopping all over the county Thursday night.
Starting this evening, Luther said Entergy will provide updated information about power restoration areas on its website, www.entergy.com.
“I apologize for any inconvenience. We’re trying to the best we can,” Luther said.
Tia Lyons may be contacted at 870-862-6611 or by email at tlyons@ eldoradonews.com.