Afternoon update: Wind hampering work on power lines

With precipitation slowing down across Mississippi County Friday afternoon, area providers have been able to begin the process of restoring power to those who have been out over the past 24 hours.

Mississippi County Electric Co-Op still had around 250 customers without power as of 4 p.m. Friday, but had restored power to around 550 homes. Most of the company's Gosnell customers have been restored, while some outages remain scattered throughout Manila and the area north of Manila.

Director Brad Harrison said he cannot predict when all power will be restored, mainly because the high winds still blowing are causing delays in the work.

"The winds are blowing and the lines are galloping. We can fix something then have to go back and fix it again an hour later," he said. "So we don't have a timeline, we just need this wind to stop howling on us."

Similarly, Entergy Arkansas has been able to restore power to many of its customers in the county, but some will still have to wait until Saturday. At the outage's peak Friday morning, around 2,500 Entergy customers were in the dark throughout Mississippi County, and that number had been reduced to about 1,200 by late Friday afternoon.

A large portion of Entergy's Mississippi County outages are in the southern part of the county, west of Interstate 55. In the northern side of the county, some of the main areas without power include a section just southeast of Blytheville, which is affecting just over 80 customers, and an area between Big Lake and Dell, which is impacting around 50 customers.

"We won't get everyone restored tonight," said Entergy's Russell Harris. "But we'll be working on it, and we have about 200 linemen from outside the area, some from as far as Florida, coming in to get the work done. Some of them have already arrived. We'll get a lot restored before work ends tonight, but we will still have some sporadic outages we'll have to deal with tomorrow."

sharris@blythevillecourier.com