LITTLE ROCK,
Ark. (Reuters) - A freezing rain and ice storm Christmas Day left
49,000 residents in central Arkansas without electricity, a spokesman
for the Arkansas utility Entergy told Reuters Tuesday. Most of
the customers without lights and electric heat live in a 100-mile-long
strip between Hot Springs, Ark., and the Louisiana border, said
James Thompson, spokesman for Entergy Arkansas, a unit of Entergy
Corp. Power lines snapped under the weight of the ice, causing
most of the outages, he said. Some 4,000 crew members were working
Tuesday morning to make repairs and restore power, but the company
said it could not give an estimated restoration time. "A
lot of these customers are in rural areas and it will take some
time to get to them," Thompson said. The utility has 640,000
customers in Arkansas.
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