River Valley OG&E outages and recovery times

As rain turned to heavy, wet snow Tuesday afternoon and continued to fall throughout the night in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas, more than 9,000 customers lost power throughout the River Valley.

As of Wednesday noon, 1,079 customers were still without power in Fort Smith, or 2.5% of customers, Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co reported. There were a total of 5,595 customers in western Arkansas without power.

As of 6 a.m. Wednesday, 3,923 customers in western Arkansas were without power. There were 1,607 customers in Fort Smith in a vast area from near downtown in the southeast to Barling.

Crews were working to restore power early Wednesday. But OG&E reported that the estimated time for recovery would not be until 8 p.m. Wednesday.

Christi Woodworth, vice president of marketing and communications at OG&E, said as of 7:00 a.m. Wednesday there are 6,200 OG&E customers without service, including about 4,435 in Fort Smith and western Arkansas. Most of the outages were due to heavy snow accumulations that dragged trees into power lines.

“We have 430 recovery workers working to restore power to Fort Smith and River Valley as safely and quickly as possible. Crews restored power throughout the night and will continue recovery efforts today. We expect most customers to be back up and running by 8pm.”

Outages were reported in Alma, Arkoma, Oklahoma, Van Buren, Mountainburg, Lavaca, Charleston, Subiaco and Paris in western Arkansas.

As of Wednesday morning, there were 2,181 sorties in eastern Oklahoma’s Le Flore County, southeast of Fort Smith.

Just before midnight on Tuesday, the total number of outage customers had surpassed 9,000. In Arkansas, 7,760 customers, approximately 11% of customers, have been affected, while in Oklahoma the number of customers without service has fallen to 1,833.