LITTLE ROCK — Entergy Arkansas’ chief executive officer said Friday that utility crews are “working as fast as we can” to repair power-line damage from the Christmas storm that’s expected to reach into the tens of millions of dollars.
About 80,000 Entergy customers remained without service Friday evening.
At its peak, the state’s largest utility reported 191,000 homes and businesses had power knocked out by the freezing rain and snow that struck much of the state Tuesday evening. Including smaller electric providers, 265,000 Arkansas homes and businesses were left without power at the peak of the disruption.
“Some of our customers are going through a fourth night without any power,” President and CEO Hugh McDonald said. “We’re very understanding ... and we’re working as fast as we can.”
More than 4,600 utility workers from 15 states continued restoring power Friday.
“We haven’t completed a full estimate of cost,” Mc-Donald said. “It will likely be tens of millions of dollars by the time everything is addressed.”
Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas spokesman Rob Roedel said power was restored to 19,000 of its 30,000 customers who lost service.
Cold drizzle fell on much of the state Friday, but that didn’t hinder workers, Roedel said.
“It hasn’t stopped our progress,” he said. “But it makes the job a little more wet and cold.”
Officials had prepared for conditions to worsen as National Weather Service meteorologists forecast a chance of freezing rain Friday morning and issued a winter advisory for much of Arkansas. However, the temperature stayed above freezing, and the advisory was lifted.
By Friday afternoon, snow began falling in Northwest Arkansas — an area that did not receive any snowfall during the Christmas storm.
Forecasters predicted that up to an inch would fall across the northern half of the state through this morning.
“Some people were disappointed that we didn’t have a white Christmas,” Springdale Mayor Doug Sprouse said. “I guess we’re getting it a few days late.”
TOWERS LOSE POWER
Dozens of residents huddled around an electric space heater in the community room Friday at Parris Towers, a public housing facility in Little Rock for low-income people who are 50 and older. The building lost power on Christmas Day.
The Metropolitan Housing Alliance used a gas generator to light the hallways and common areas and provide power to the community room, but the building’s 220 occupied apartments were left without heat, electricity or running water.
Carl Smith, director of public housing for the alliance, said Entergy officials were working to restore power by the end of the day Friday, but the staff planned to top off the generator’s gas tank just in case.
“I’ve been down there every day checking in and making sure the residents know that we’re not tucked away in a warm house somewhere not thinking about them and what they’re going through,” he said.
Boxes of donated apples, bottled water and bananas sat in the community room for the taking.
Several residents complained of losing all of the food they had in their refrigerators because the power had been out so long.
One man who didn’t want to give his name said he put all his food on the windowsill outside his apartment and packed it in snow. He stood in the doorway to the apartment complex wearing a lined hat and gloves, bundled in sweat shirts and shifting from foot to foot to keep moving.
“What I really want is my water back,” he said. “People need to be able to wash.”
Smith said three units at the agency’s Sunset Towers properties, a series of duplexes in the South End, were also without power but that the agency would have to hire a private contractor to make repairs there.
FOOD POURS IN TO SHELTER
The two warming shelters in Little Rock — Dunbar Community Center on 16th and Chester streets and the Southwest Community Center on Base Line Road — were mostly empty Friday afternoon. Only a handful of residents stayed overnight Thursday.
“That’s probably going to change as people keep going without power,” said Matt Burks, an employee with Little Rock’s Emergency Management Department.
Power was restored to Little Rock’s Our House shelter about 8:30 p.m. Thursday, providing light and hope for residents who were stuck in the cold and dark since Christmas afternoon.
The shelter for the working homeless on East Roosevelt Road had lost about 15 freezers and refrigerators full of food that spoiled when power was disrupted, leaving residents with primarily a soup diet. But Executive Director Georgia Mjartan said gifts of perishable food for hungry residents poured in Friday morning.
“I’ve been in the back of the kitchen, and pretty much our walk-in freezer, our walkin refrigerator and two big refrigerators in the front are all filled,” Mjartan said. “Some people have called, which is really helpful, and said, ‘What do you need?’”
Mjartan said the response was inspiring, with many people even offering up their leftover Christmas meals, including hams, for shelter residents.
“We’ve gotten a bunch of fruit, eggs, milk,” Mjartan said. “We’ve gotten a little bit of meat, which helps because we can freeze it to [use] into next month.”
DEEP SNOW IN HOT SPRINGS
In Garland County, where 12 to 15 inches of snow fell Tuesday night, residents continued cleaning up downed limbs and debris.
Austin Gibbs, owner of Gibbs Tree Service, shoveled snow off the roof of a Hot Springs home Friday to ensure better traction while he and his crew cleared a fallen tree.
“We began working Christmas night and kept going until we couldn’t feel our fingers anymore,” he said. “There’s not a yard here that doesn’t have damage. Every piece of our equipment has trees on it.”
Garland County Judge Rick Davis said Friday’s higher temperatures helped melt snow and ice off roadways.
Road crews have cleared trees from the roads, and Davis said he will apply for a state permit to burn debris.
“We’ve got a ton,” he said. “We got hit hard.”
Arkansas Red Cross officials opened a warming shelter Friday in the Hot Springs Convention Center. Davis said about 75 people stayed in two other Hot Springs shelters Thursday night.
TREES BLOCK ROADWAYS
As of Friday evening, about 50,000 homes and businesses in Pulaski County were still without power.
Dozens of traffic lights also remained out across Little Rock because of power failures.
A Central Arkansas Transit Authority bus collided with a truck on Arch Street on Friday in a spot without a working traffic light. The bus came to stop against a light pole, authorities said.
CATA spokesman Betty Wineland said the bus driver asked to be taken to his doctor and no passengers were on the bus when the accident occurred.
The rain Friday helped to clear some streets in Little Rock during the day, but the city’s Public Works Department will have crews working through the weekend to keep streets salted and to remove downed trees.
Eric Petty, public works operations manager, surveyed streets late Friday afternoon. He said reports of downed trees blocking roads had climbed to more than 200 and that trouble spots were being added “constantly.”
“There are still a lot of hilly areas that are shaded with trees, and those have a lot of snow and ice still, but really there are an enormous amount of trees,” he said.
“Our hope is to have the trees cut and out of all the roadways in about a week, but it might take six or eight weeks to then go back and pick up all the debris.”
Petty said residents can drag limbs and other debris to the side of the road for pickup. Normally, the solid waste division has a size limit, but that has been waived because of the storm, he said.
“We’ll be using backhoes and dump trucks, and we will be able to get all of it,” he said. “It’s just going to take some time.”
Streets were fairly clear in North Little Rock, said Mayor Patrick Hays, who spent his last Friday in office surveying the damage and debris. He said late Friday that there were about 300 homes and businesses throughout the city still without power.
“It’s small pockets, which makes it slow-going,” he said. “We’re hopeful that we can have all the power restored tonight, but it may be likely that we’ll be working on it again tomorrow morning.”
AID RAINS ON CATS, DOGS
At the darkened Pulaski County Humane Society shelter, almost 400 cats and dogs were kept warm after donors gave hundreds of blankets and towels, about six generators, power cords and space heaters. Officials have said the shelter on Colonel Glenn Road might not have power restored until Tuesday.
“It’s been overwhelming and heartwarming to have people rally around us like this,” Pulaski County Humane Society President Christine Henderson said.
“It’s just been a steady stream of people dropping things off all day. We had one woman drive all the way out here to give us $7 because it was all she had, and we just burst into tears. It’s people like that who keep this place running — everyday people who spare $10 or $15 a month to help us feed and take care of our animals.”
While the cold spell created more work for the state’s livestock farmers, so far it hasn’t seemed to have endangered any cattle herds, said Phil Sims, the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture’s Cooperative Extension Service staff chairman for Pope County.
On Friday, Sims said in an e-mail that livestock producers are working at getting forage to their animals, as well as making sure their drinking water doesn’t freeze. And dealing with equipment can be a headache, with dead batteries and the potential for getting stuck.
“Snow makes any available grazing hard to get to, so the cattle expend energy trying to get to the grass,” said Sims, of Russellville. “Mud and muck make it harder to get hay and feed to the cattle, but in the river valley, the ground is far from saturated.”
Information for this article was contributed by Glen Chase,Aziza Musa and Aprille Hanson of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/29/2012