Trees downed; power cut to about 3,000
Published 5:00 am Monday, June 7, 2004
Severe thunderstorms ripped through the Lincoln County areaSunday afternoon, knocking out power to about 3,000 households anddamaging some property.
Some households were still without power Monday morning, but itwas expected to be restored in the morning hours.
“We’re still on it today,” said Kenny Goza, Entergy customeraccounts manager, adding that power had been restored to about 95percent of the 2,200 customers they had affected by the storm. “Itwas a pretty intense little storm.”
At the height of the storm, Goza said, high winds, downed treesand lightning caused about 50 cases of power outages throughout thecounty.
Most of Entergy’s customers had power restored by 3 a.m., hesaid.
Tommy Provance, operations manager for Southwest MississippiElectric, estimated that 700-800 households in their service arealost power, but their customers all had power restored by lateSunday night.
A majority of the households that lost power were in the HalbertHeights area, he said, where a tree fell and broke a power pole.Power was restored to those customers around 8:30 p.m., hesaid.
Other customers in the Lott Smith Road area were affected whenlightning struck a transformer and burned fuses, he said. Theyreceived power around 10:30 p.m.
“We just hope no more storms come through,” Provance said. “Weneed a break.”
Brookhaven Police Chief Pap Henderson said his departmentreceived several reports of downed trees and some property damage,but no flooding.
“We were quite busy here yesterday afternoon,” he said. “Damagewas pretty well scattered in the southern area of the city. Theworst of the damage to power lines was in the Halbert Heightsarea.”
Henderson said the worst reports of property damage appear to befrom downed trees on a house on Halbert Heights Road and at BanksBarbecue and Sandwich Shop on Brookhaven Street.
Calls to the restaurant Monday morning went unanswered.
Trees also went down on West Highland Drive and MonticelloStreet, Henderson said. Others fell in yards and did not appear tocause major damage.
Capt. Fred Smith of the Brookhaven Fire Department’s CentralStation said the crews were busy Sunday afternoon responding todowned power lines.
“There was considerable wind damage and power outages,” hesaid.
The station was without power for 2-3 hours Sunday afternoon,Smith said.