LITTLE ROCK, Ark — Friday night's storm brought a lot of damage to the electrical grid throughout the state, with tens of thousands of people without power.
David Lewis, spokesman for Entergy Arkansas, said they can't give an estimate time yet of when everyone's power will be back on.
He said with planning and scouting still left to do, these power outages will definitely carry over into Sunday.
"The restoration is a gradual process and we've gotten 25,000 back on already, and we'll steadily get more and more back on as the time goes on," Lewis said.
The Friday night storm that brought damage across the state, left Entergy Arkansas with a lot of work to do on Saturday morning.
"We saw this storm coming a few days out and it proved to be every bit as bad as we thought it would be," Lewis said.
He said power outages began at 10 p.m. on Friday with a peak at 6 a.m. on Saturday, leaving 42,000 people without electricity.
"When we know that there's trouble on the way, we put our crews on standby," Lewis said.
He said 400 of Entergy's own linemen, plus about 150 contractors and other utility workers, were ready to go as soon as they came up.
"We've got more on the way. We expect to have over 1,000 workers on the job tomorrow," Lewis said.
He said with outages scattered across the state, crews are as well, working 16-hour days until every customer is taken care of.
"They stay in that pattern till all the work is done," Lewis said.
Customers like the FoodWise supermarket on Geyer Springs Road are without power.
"We've got a lot of customers we've had to turn back," said Charles Linwood, who works in the meat department.
He said the supermarket had to shut its doors for the day after the power went out at 2 a.m. on Saturday.
"We noticed that the coolers and the bunkers were not working," Linwood said.
He said he showed up to work at 7 a.m. and since then, it hadn't been his typical work day.
"No, not at all. It was crazy to say the least," Linwood said.
He said workers spent their day in the dark, cleaning and preparing for the lights to come back on, while still making the most of what the Friday night storms blew through.
"We've had a good time today, me and my co-workers, we've enjoyed each other. We've bonded," Linwood said.
The counties hit the hardest were Ashley, Chicot, and White.
He said to make sure to stay away from downed power lines and if you see one, call 1-800-9OUTAGE to report it.
Governor Asa Hutchinson also declared a state of emergency Saturday afternoon to assist the crews working to restore power around the state.