A power outage in west Little Rock left hundreds of Entergy customers without power and caused four schools in the Pulaski County Special School District to be closed on Monday, officials said.
Joe T. Robinson High School, middle school and elementary school, and the Center of Innovation were without power as of 9 a.m., the district said in a post on X.
All of the schools have addresses listed online on Cantrell Road or Arkansas 10.
"Entergy doesn't expect power to be restored until 5pm. Therefore, we will be closing for the impacted schools. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience," the post said.
Jessica Duff, a spokesperson for the Pulaski County Special School District, said that just before 11:30 a.m. on Monday, their I.T. department had signals that power might be back in the affected schools, but Entergy still had the outage reported.
Matt Ramsey, a spokesman for Entergy, said a large tree fell on a power line and broke three electrical poles.
The outage reportedly started just before 3 a.m. on Monday and impacted over 1,800 customers in the area just before 8 a.m., according to updates form the utility's online outage map.
The outage area includes residences and businesses along Ferndale Cut Off Road, Ferncliff Road and parts of Kanis Road as well as parts of Arkansas 10.
As of noon, nearly 500 customers were still without power, according to Entergy's outage map.
"Our crews feel like the tree fell due to the ground being so wet from all the rain and flooding in the area from last week. The roots just kind of came up," Ramsey said Monday morning. "It is just one of those things with nature, you never know if a tree is going to fall until it falls."
He said crews were focused on restoring power back to the schools first and then they would focus on restoring power to other customers.
Ramsey said the company hopes to have all power restored today, but said that some customers in rural or wooded areas might take some time to reach.