PINE BLUFF, Ark. — Though the winter weather is over, the aftermath is not.
As of 5:00 p.m. on Monday, thousands of Arkansans are still without power and electric crews have been working long days to restore it.
"It's not very simple, it's very complicated actually," Rob Roedel with Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas said.
Roedel said crews have worked 16-hour days to get power back on in south Arkansas, but despite the long hours, it's not a quick process.
Crews with C & L Electric are currently restoring distribution lines, which is step three out of five for the entire process.
"After that point is when we begin. Correcting damages to service drops are the lines that run from the power line to your home," Roedel said.
So what happens when your neighbor has power but you don't?
Roedel explained that a situation like that usually that means they're on a different circuit than you.
"That means a different line is feeding their home, and that can confuse people quite a bit. I've seen this over the years," he added.
More than 100 outside line workers have been assisting C & L.
"It's easily some of the worst damage I've seen in my 20 odd years of career of doing this. A lot of damaged structures, a lot of destroyed structures," he described.
Matt Ramsey with Entergy said this restoration process takes longer than usual because they had to bring in extra equipment to check out the damage.
"There's been places where we brought in swamp boats in order to kind of reach these places and also ATVs, and special equipment and track vehicles in order to kind of get over the wooded terrain. So these are not easily accessible areas that we're talking about," Ramsey explained.
He also said a lot of rebuilding has been involved because the weight of the ice did so much damage.
"A lot of power poles got broken. And so that's due to the eyes that fell onto the powerlines. And so it just takes a little extra time, especially in these hard-to-reach places," Ramsey said.
Both Roedel and Ramsey have asked for patience as the restoration process moves forward.
"We can't have everybody's power back on at one time, just because that would overload the grid, and that would end up causing even more damage So just be patient as we're working to try to get everybody's power back on," Ramsey said.