More help on the way with outages

More help is on the way to restore power to the remaining 4,500 Madison County customers from a peak of 10,481 outages following severe weather Tuesday afternoon that included a tornado that skirted the county line but veered into Hinds and Rankin counties.

Strong winds as high as 60 miles per hour were recorded at both Hawkins Field and Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport, the National Weather Service said.

Reports of trees down in Ridgeland, Madison and Canton have continued to come in, but no injuries had been reported, Madison County Emergency Management Director Albert Jones said Wednesday.

“I have some guys out in the field right now and we are still trying to assess the situation,” Jones said. “We are still getting calls.”

Entergy Mississippi spokesperson Mara Hartmann said Wednesday she did not have an estimated time that power would be fully restored but said that they have people working on the problem and expected more help to be on the way.

“We have made a lot of progress,” Hartmann said.

She said they have roughly 500 linemen working to restore outages statewide. Hartmann said they bolstered that workforce with another 260 contractors

They have requested help from another 1,300 or so workers who would make up crews that would repair damage to their system and work to remove fallen trees and limbs.

As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, Entergy Mississippi had restored power to more than 53,000 customers causing outages for nearly 80,000. As of 6 p.m., about 26,000 customers remain without power. Most of the remaining outages are in areas hit hardest by the storm, including Copiah, Hinds, Madison, Rankin and Warren counties.

Hartmann said that the storm knocked out six substations in their coverage area. She reported their total averages in Mississippi to be at 35,700 on Wednesday morning.

All of the outages are believed to be related to the storms that passed through on Tuesday afternoon.

“We have been able to restore power to more than half of our customers,” Hartmann said. “We had a lot of damage. But we are making great progress and are trying to restore power as quickly as it is safe to do so.”

The National Weather Service in Jackson reported Wednesday that they are still out assessing the aftermath of the storm that tracked southeast into Northeast Jackson and along Lakeland Drive. 

Hartmann said that they begin to see trees and tree limbs damage lines during any weather event where winds get above 30 mph.

The NWS said that no significant damage had been reported in Madison County. They reported that the tornado did cause some damage on the Hinds County side of County Line Road.

Tuesday’s storms followed another bout of inclement weather reported on Sunday. 

Sandy Powlett, Entergy customer service manager for Madison County, said that they had some outages reported on Sunday. She said outages probably peaked at about 600 on Sunday.

The NWS reported an EF1 Tornado touched down in the north and northeast part of Madison County on Sunday. She said it took a path about three miles long and 250 yards wide at its widest traveling in between Camden and Pickens. Wind speeds were recorded as high as 95 mph. 

No injuries or structural damage have been reported from Sunday, though the NWS did say they had multiple reports of trees down in wooded areas.