LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Thousands of people across central Arkansas are still without power Thursday after strong storms Wednesday night.
Nearly 40 thousand people had zero power in Arkansas as of 10 p.m. Thursday. Roughly 20 thousand of those are in Pulaski County.
"The neighbors, I worry about them. We've been checking on them, there's a lot of elderly here,” David Barnett said.
Barnett lives in the Leawood neighborhood in Little Rock. He said his power quickly went out during the storm, leaving him without air conditioning for almost 24 hours.
“We do have some outages but not like this. This is probably the longest,” he said.
Chris Brown, a director with Entergy, said the storm knocked the power out for over 82 thousand homes. About half of those homes were restored by Thursday evening.
"A lot of the time it takes to make repairs is due to just the safety processes and procedures we need to go through. The damage is very severe and broad,” Brown said.
Brown said crews from surrounding states are coming in to help decrease wait times.
"We're expecting the bulk of our customers will be restored over the next couple days, but some will be extended into Sunday potentially,” Brown said.
If you live in North Little Rock, the electric department said most customers should be restored, but some may have to wait until Friday and possibly Saturday.
Brown said crews are working as quickly as they can.
“For such a large geographic territory, it takes us a lot of time to move around and get to places,” he said.
Brown said Entergy picks who gets restored first by most critical populations. He said social hubs and hospitals are always the first to have power restored.
If you are still without power, Brown said the best way to stay in touch is through Entergy's text message alerts. Those alerts give you an estimated time of when it will be restored.