LITTLE ROCK — About 70 percent of Little Rock’s residents were without electricity Wednesday, and some face having no power for seven days or more as the city, along with North Little Rock and Pulaski County, slowed to a crawl under a blanket of snow and ice.
Little Rock City Manager Bruce Moore said he began working with the state to have the storm-damaged city declared a disaster area in order to seek federal assistance.
“There is a lot of damage, and it is spread throughout the city,” he said. “There were about 20 trees still blocking roads [Wednesday afternoon], and with everything freezing overnight, tomorrow morning is also going to be tough.”
Nonessential government departments in both cities and the county were closed Wednesday alongwith public transportation, many businesses and most other public institutions from museums to libraries.
With subfreezing temperatures expected overnight Wednesday and many roads expected to ice over, officials in the cities set a tentative goal of reopening city services at noon today.
Central Arkansas Transit Authority spokesman Betty Wineland said late Wednesday that staff members would begin assessing the roads about 3:30 a.m. today, and depending on conditions, buses could begin running by early afternoon. She said the River Rail trolley system may run sooner,depending on how much ice forms overnight.
The agency’s para-transit division was able to take about 27 patients for dialysis treatments Wednesday, and Wineland said the staff would do the same today.
The National Weather Service recorded official measurements of 10 inches of snow in Little Rock and North Little Rock, with about 9 inches of that falling before midnight Christmas Day. Some areas around the cities received as much as 12 inches, depending on their elevations, meteorologist Julie Lesko said.
Hugh McDonald, chief executive officer of Entergy Arkansas Inc., said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon that it would be seven days or more before all Little Rock customers have electricity restored to their homes. He said the extensive damage, fallen trees, hazardous road conditions and the need for help from out of state was delaying assessment of the total damage state-wide and in getting power restored to customers.
“There has been some repair work in Little Rock ... focusing on the distribution lines and transmission lines,” he said. “Today and probably tomorrow we are focused on getting out and surveying the damage and getting a full assessment.”
McDonald said the transmission and distribution lines need to be fixed before the individual lines affecting homesand businesses are repaired.
In North Little Rock, about 1,788 customers were without power as of midafternoon, according to North Little Rock Electric Department Services Manager Jill Ponder. Shesaid she expected about 700 of those customers to have power by the end of the day Wednesday. North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays said he hopes all of the customers will have power by the end of the day today.
“We worked through the night [Tuesday], and we’ll keep working until everything is restored,” Ponder said. “All of our available crews are out.”
The department set up a Red Cross winter shelter at 2700 Willow St. for residents who have no electricity, she said. The phone number at the shelter is (501) 791-8541.
The delay in damage assessments by Entergy put some Pulaski County and Little Rock road crews in a holding pattern throughout the day Wednesday.
“We have cars on the sides of the road and stuck in places, and trees are down everywhere,” said Little Rock Public Works Operations Manager Eric Petty. “A bunch of those trees have utility lines tangled in them, so we have to wait on Entergy to get the lines out before we have our crews cut them and get them off the road.”
The Entergy delays also slowed efforts to clear rural roads in the county, said Pulaski County Public Works Director Sherman Smith. He said 80 percent of the department’s work was clearing downed trees Wednesday, but the crews can’t touch trees with power lines in them until an Entergy crew arrives.
McDonald said about 400 line workers were sent out state-wide Wednesday and about 250 vegetation specialists were working on downed trees, with more workers expected to arrive today from other states.
Smith estimated that it will take more than a monthto clear the 450 trees down on the county’s 1,100 miles of roads.
“The farther west you go [in the county], the worse it gets,” Smith said.
Road crews throughout Pulaski County reported that they were working first on clearing main roadways, and many side streets and lessused roads would be plowed today and Friday depending on the weather.
Road conditions also affected response times for first-responders.
Little Rock Fire Department spokesman Capt. Randy Hickmon said fire crews responding to calls encountered plenty of fallen trees, some of which the crews were able to cut up and move themselves.
But on calls where it was unclear whether power lines were live, the fire crews waited for several hours until Entergy workers arrived to check the lines.
Hickmon said several trucks had gotten stuck in the snow and had to waitfor wreckers to pull them out. He said city firefighters had to wait their turn behind the large number of crashed, stalled and stuck vehicles all over the city.
“With the load of wrecks ... and the shortage of wreckers, we’ve had several units that had to wait four or five hours to get out of a ditch,” Hickmon said.
The weather and slick roads slowed business for some but made it more hectic for others.
Bookings at the Pulaski County jail were few as of Wednesday afternoon, with just one person booked as of 1 p.m. Staff members said they typically see 40 or 50 people booked into the jail by that time on Wednesdays.
The area’s homeless shelters, however, were at capacity. A spokesman for the Salvation Army Central Arkansas Command said its 74-bed shelter would be full Wednesday for a second night in a row.
St. Francis House, which has 55 beds and serves homeless veterans, had about three open beds in its women’s side and three open in the men’s side.
Dennis Beavers, director of the Sharing Opportunities for Achievement and Renewal homeless services network, was taking homeless people to the Little Rock Compassion Center, which normally has 200 beds and the capacity to house 400 people; and to the Union Rescue Mission, which has a policy of never turning away anyone in need of shelter, he said.
Meanwhile, trash pickup in both cities is expected to resume today and continue through Saturday.
People left without heat in their homes made pilgrimages Wednesday to the gas stations, hotels, grocery stores and few restaurants that were open. Many of the grocery stores had a crush of shoppers.
A woman who answered the phone at the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Base Line Road in Little Rock said the store was so busy that there wereno employees who could go find a manager to issue a comment. The Kroger grocery store on Beechwood Street in Little Rock had a steady stream of shoppers before closing in the late afternoon.
On Main Street in North Little Rock, Hugh Perkins, 59, was clearing off the parking lot outside his store, Medicine Man Pharmacy, to help his customers.
Across the street, Waffle House had a steady flow of customers.
Barry Wood, 64, of Lebanon, Pa., had stopped in to eat because it was the closest restaurant to his hotel. He said he and his wife, Bev Wood, were on their way to Arizona and had stopped in Arkansas for the night Tuesday.
“We quit ahead of the storm,” he said. “We knew the storm was coming.”
He said others at the hotel told stories of being stuck on the sides of highways for eight hours or more.
In Little Rock, customers claimed every empty seat in Dugan’s Pub on Rock Street. The restaurant was slammed with people who had no power and couldn’t cook, and who had scoured the city for a place to eat.
Spencer Short, who had flown in from San Francisco to visit relatives in North Little Rock, said he and his family lost power about 7 p.m. Tuesday.
“We stayed in a hotel last night,” he said. “My girlfriend saved the day with her cooking yesterday. The power went out 15 minutes before the prime rib was supposed to be done, but it was perfect. We know one of the waitresses here, and when she said they were open, we were on our way.” Information for this article was contributed by Jake Sandlin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/27/2012