April 16, 2001

At the height of a power outage Saturday, several thousand Harrison Entergy customers were without electricity just after noon, according to a local Entergy spokesman.

Harrison customer service manager Mike Brown blamed a squirrel for starting a fire on a switch at Entergy's Harrison West substation at the corner of Industrial Park Road and Goblin Drive. He said the switch that connects two of three large transformers in the substation was severely damaged.

Brown complimented local Entergy repairmen for "quickly assessing the damage and making temporary repairs, which allowed power to be restored in about an hour." He noted that customers in west Harrison were affected by the outage.

But he explained that the temporary fix on the switch wouldn't last through rains that were forecast for the weekend.

Several substation specialists were called in from Little Rock Saturday afternoon to bring replacement equipment and assist in repairs. During the afternoon, Brown said "as much load as possible was rerouted from the Harrison West substation to the Harrison East Substation behind Claridge." That kept many customers from losing electricity when power was turned off from the substation to perform additional repairs to the damaged switch.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=1682200&BRD=1815&PAG=461&dept_id=59849&rfi=6

-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), April 19, 2001