Restoring Power Fast, Even as Scars Linger

A lineman strings high-speed cable.

When North Little Rock Electric’s Keith McCourt emerged from the municipal utility’s shelter on March 31 and saw that deadly tornadoes had spared his workplace, he had only two things in mind.

First, the safety of loved ones; next, restoring power to a community that had lost one citizen and dozens of homes and businesses.

“We emerged from the safe room shortly after we knew the tornado missed our location,” McCourt, the utility’s spokesman, told Arkansas Business. “After making several phone calls to ensure our families were safe, we started in with a game plan.”

At the time, the utility had 15,000 outages in its service territory.

By Tuesday afternoon only 2,100 customers were still without power, and that response was only one part of a remarkably quick recovery by state utilities.

Teamwork was the key, McCourt said, and Rob Roedel of the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas, Brandi Hinkle of Entergy Arkansas and Lizzie Reinholt of Summit Utilities all echoed that sentiment.

Just 60 hours after the first lights went out, North Little Rock Electric had restored 13,000 customers’ service. “After viewing all the destruction in person, I’m amazed and proud of our coordinated results,” McCourt said.

East of Wynne, where much of the Cross County seat was damaged and four people died, the state’s cooperatives sent teams to help with Woodruff Electric Cooperative’s recovery effort. 

The team approach also applied to First Electric Cooperative of Jacksonville.

“Crews at the electric cooperatives across Arkansas worked on Friday, Saturday and Sunday to restore service to members,” Roedel said. At one time, 10,000 members statewide had lost power. By midday Tuesday, all members’ lights were back on. “First Electric of Jacksonville and Woodruff Electric of Forrest City experienced the worst of the outages, primarily in Cross and Lonoke counties,” Roedel said.

Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. of Little Rock, the generation and transmission provider for the cooperatives, replaced 23 transmission structures damaged or destroyed in the Wynne area.

“Debris removal was essential to even travel to the affected locations,” said McCourt. “We started repairing what infrastructure was still standing, knowing a large amount would need to be completely rebuilt.” 

McCourt gave great credit to utilities and businesses that came to North Little Rock’s aid, including Benton Utilities, the city of Bentonville, Conway Corp., Jonesboro City Water & Light, Paragould Light Water & Cable and Clarksville Connected Utilities. Along with those members of the Arkansas Municipal Power Association, contractors like ULCS, Musgrove Construction and Asplundh Tree Expert LLC did some heavy lifting. “We wouldn’t be where we are if not for the help,” McCourt said.

Entergy Arkansas, the state’s largest electric utility, had employees working 16-hour shifts and sometimes manually carrying new power poles into areas unreachable by truck. The investor-owned utility had only 5,500 customers without power by the end of Tuesday, down from a peak of 56,000. It used excavators, bulldozers and tracked vehicles in the repair work, Hinkle said.

The storms damaged or destroyed about 1,500 Entergy utility poles in central Arkansas and Wynne, along with 435 transformers and 2,000 spans of wire. About 1,600 customers had homes or businesses damaged too badly for power to be restored to them, Entergy said.

Summit Utilities dispatched more than 150 operations workers to more than 400 locations, turning off natural gas at badly damaged homes, removing meters and clearing debris. 

Summit employees were also volunteering to aid response efforts, and the company was putting up a donation portal for employees, as well as buying and collecting essential items to donate for community relief.

The human toll on Arkansans was immense, said Lori Arnold Ellis, executive director of the Red Cross in the state, and she told the Rotary Club of Little Rock on Tuesday that healing those scars will take more time. “Right now, this is personal. We all feel this,” she said. “But we are human, and we will move on. But these people who have lost their homes, they’re not moving on any time soon.”