Pine Bluff Mayor Shirley Washington said Wednesday she believed most of the people without power in the city should have their service restored by the end of the day Wednesday.
Speaking on the morning show with Greg Horne and Will Jenkins, Washington said the problem was that Entergy didn’t have the manpower to begin restoring power until crews arrived from other states to help. She went on to say that when the crews arrived, one of their first priorities was to restore power to the nursing homes and the hospital, which had been using generators.
“Yesterday they really hit the ground running,” Washington said, adding that the repair crews were able to get a number of customers back on Tuesday. She said the city street department and county road department began clearing roads at about 9 p.m. Sunday and that job has continued since then. Earlier Wednesday, County Judge Gerald Robinson sent Deltaplex News.com a list of roads in the county that remain closed.
Washington said city and county officials were to meet with representatives of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management and Jefferson County Office of Emergency Management at Hestand Stadium Wednesday morning to work out how to deal with the all of the debris and tree limbs that collected and where to put it.
“The storm we had was major but we have a lot to be thankful for,” Washington said. “A lot of other communities had tornadoes so it could have been worse.”
Listen to Mayor Shirley Washington’s full interview at the audio link below:
