Power restored to thousands

LITTLE ROCK, AR - It's been 5 days going into 6 nights since the winter storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of Arkansans. Slowly but surely, the lights are coming back on.

Entergy is making progress and more and more customers are back online every hour.
Some people say they're very grateful to have a hot meal, a hot shower, and a heated home.

Dozens of Entergy crews are out all over Central Arkansas restoring power to the thousands of customers doing without for days on end.

The lights are back on at the Little Rock Racquet Club where maintenance man Michael Murphy is helping get ready for those New Year's resolution weight loss members to break a sweat. "I love that the power is back on here. Luckily at home we had power every day, but I feel for everybody else who have been without power and is still without power. I'm just glad it's back on here."

Ron Gonzales and his family stayed in a hotel for the first few days without heat, and then toughed it out using the fireplace for warmth. He says they just had to hunker down in survival mode. "It’s been 4 and a half days now. The power came back on at 11:45am and went out at 2:27pm Christmas Day."

Gonzales says he's lost power before and doesn't understand why utility crews can't come up with some way to prevent or at least reduce the number of outages, because he knows this will happen again. While sad to lose their food in the fridge, the Gonzales family says they're just craving a hot meal now, a hot shower, and a good night sleep. "It was hard. It's was just hard. I'm just glad the power is back on."

Richard Dickinson says the power came on at his house for a little while, but went out again. He's on well water and don't have enough generator power to pump through the pipes. "Back in 2000 we were out for more than a week so we learned from that." He says they filled the bathtubs with water just to flush the commode. "We're getting to the point where we really need a shower after 5 days"

He says there's nothing he can do now but be patient while Entergy expects to restore power to all customers by Tuesday.