According to Clovis Macon of the Forrest City Street Department, crews were at work not long after the storm was over.
"We did quite a bit," he said. "We did most of it last night, getting streets open. We got back into Beech Grove today, where there was the heaviest damage, and we were trying to clean up the limbs that were torn down."
Macon also said there was an effort ongoing to clean gutters and other places where rain-washed debris might affect drainage.
"We didn't have any real drainage problems last night," he said. "But if we don't take care of it, we will have drainage problems if and when there comes another rain. It's more of a preventive thing."
Mayor Larry Bryant said it is one of those things that happen in Arkansas.
"I was just talking to my solid waste people Monday, telling them we were about to get caught up. We were about to cut down the number of chippers working. But we have two out today.
"Still, we were fortunate," he continued. "No one was injured to my knowledge."
He confirmed that city crews were out with backhoes and other equipment last night. One of the main jobs last night was to move limbs and trees out of the streets so vehicles could get through.
"Our people really stepped up to the plate," Bryant said.
He said the poles that were down along Dawson Road gave the night an eerie feeling.
"It brought back memories of the ice storm (in December of 2000). It was the same area. But Entergy did a fantastic job. They were out last night," Bryant said.
Although the broken poles were still lying where they fell, new poles were already erected by the time most people started going to work this morning.
Entergy spokesman Mike Davis said at the height of the storm, the company had about 1,200 customers without power, mostly on the north end of town in the Dawson Road and Beech Grove area.
"We had seven poles go down and there were numerous trees on lines which impacted our service," Davis said. We lost two major circuits in Forrest City. We had almost everyone restored by about 5 a.m., except for a few isolated cases, and we're still wrapping those up."
Entergy used extra crew members to help restore power. "We called in everyone in this area who could be reached and were within a safe driving distance," Davis said.
Woodruff Electric spokesman Carl Horton said customers reported very few outages. "We had a few scattered outages, but nothing serious. We were fortunate. Thankfully, we didn't have any of that hard wind."
A spokesperson at the St. Francis County Shop said there were a few trees that workers had to move off roads last night, but said there was not as lot of heavy damage out in the county.
Belinda Fortenberry, acting general manager of East Arkansas Video, said there were outages during and after the storm, but she also said there was nothing major.
To the best of her knowledge, she said, service is pretty much back to normal.
"We were out until about 2 this morning working different problems," she said. "We had some mini outages in different areas. We came back on when the power came back on, in most places."
The National Weather Service in Memphis said today that last night's storm damage was caused by downburst winds.
A NWS spokesman said downburst winds are caused by severe thunderstorms.
"When a severe thunderstorm moves over an area, there can be a column of very intense wind coming out of the bottom of that storm. When it hits the ground, it has to go somewhere. The main part of that wind hit where those trees and poles were located."
The spokesman also said it did not appear that any type of warning had been issued for St. Francis County prior to the storm.
By FRED CONLEY
T-H Sports Writer
John Krause thought he had snagged a big bream Wednesday morning while fishing at Beck Spur Pond near the Beck Spur Baptist Church.
Once he got the fish completely out of the water where he could get a closer look, he knew he had caught something else.
But even he wasn't sure what it was until he made a call to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and described his catch.
To his amazement, Game and Fish personnel said what Krause had described to them over the phone was a South American Red Bellied Piranha -- a fish with razor sharp teeth known to feed on humans and small animals.
So how did such a fish come to be in Beck Spur Pond?
Krause, an employee at Machen Ford, doesn't know the answer to that question yet.
He is waiting for the Game and Fish biologists to come and look at the catch which will confirm or refute the fact that it is, indeed, a piranha. That could be another day or two. The biologists are out of state working on another matter. In the meantime, they told Krause to put the fish on ice -- literally -- and preserve it.
"It sure looks like a piranha," Krause said. "At least from pictures I've seen. And the guys at the Game and Fish said it sure Ssounded like it could be a piranha."
The fish is 18 inches in length, eight inches tall and weighs almost five pounds. Its teeth appear to be blunted or worn down, for whatever reason.
"I'd like to know how it got into the pond, and if there are any more like it in there," Krause said.
Three people were sentenced to the Arkansas Department of Corrections during circuit court proceedings Wednesday at the St. Francis County Courthouse.
Jerome White, 22, of Forrest City, was sentenced to 10 years in state prison on drug charges stemming from an April arrest. He was serving a five-year suspended sentence for robbery when he was arrested in April. White was also ordered to begin serving another five-year suspended sentence after he is released from prison.
Clayton H. Harris, 43, of Greenville, Ill., was sentenced to 24 months in prison after a previous five-year suspended sentence on drug charges was revoked. He was also ordered to enroll in a drug rehabilitation program.
A Hughes man was sentenced to three years in prison on a variety of drug charges. Carlton R. Spears, 26, was given credit for time served.