After the battering of storms that past through the western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma corridor in the early hours of Sunday morning, numerous customer of both the Arkansas Valley Electric Coop and OG&E woke on Sunday to power outages affecting seven counties in Arkansas and one in Oklahoma.
Approximately 6000 customers of the two companies were waiting on crews to restore electricity to their homes on a wet Sunday morning.
Heavy rains, high winds, and damaging wind moved into the area just after Midnight Sunday morning and crews worked through the night in an effort to restore power. Customers still left in the dark as of 10:30 included those in the following counties: Crawford, Franklin, Scott, Johnson, Franklin, Pope and Sebastian in Arkansas and LeFlore in Oklahoma.
Lavaca was one of the hardest hit areas in and around Fort Smith with 1425 customers down. Police report numerous down trees, power lines and damaged houses in the Sebastian County community. A similar number of customers were affected along the I40 corridor in southeast Johnson and west central Pope counties.
