A winter storm packing heavy wet snow and gusty winds Christmas afternoon through the night has impacted SWEPCO’s service area with widespread damage to company power lines and equipment, with the I-30 corridor from Mt. Pleasant to Texarkana, and the De Queen/Nashville area especially hard hit.
The peak of the outages for this storm occurred at 7 a.m. Dec. 26, with 16,900 customers impacted across SWEPCO. As of 10 a.m., there are 15,000 customers without power, with the majority of those in Mt. Pleasant (includes Mt. Vernon/Winnsboro/Pittsburg/Naples/Daingerfield), with 8,000 outages. The DeQueen and Nashville area has about 1,400 outages at 10 a.m.
Estimated Times of Restoration (ETRs), or 95 percent of those customers who can take power, for these areas are:
New Boston: Midnight Wednesday
Texarkana: Midnight Wednesday (peak of outages was 2,900 at midnight Tuesday.)
DeQueen: Noon Thursday
Nashville: Noon Thursday
Mt. Pleasant: Midnight Thursday (rural areas)
There are currently 256 full-time employees (32 line crews and 14 tree crews) dedicated to this storm recovery, with the majority of those working in the Mt. Pleasant to Texarkana to DeQueen areas.
