Local Businesses Impacted By Storm, Outages
By: Lauren Trager, KARK 4 News
Updated: December 31, 2012
The week between Christmas and New Year's is often one of the busiest for businesses.
But without power, many cash registers were quiet.
That was the case at Prickett's store off Lawson Road in west Little Rock.
For five days, the store was anything but warm.
Without power, their business was on ice.
"We've pretty much had to cut all our vendors back because it's kind of a rolling stone," said owner Horace Prickett.
Prickett says they lost thousands of dollars at the pumps and in perishable food items.
But they didn't shut their doors to a community, he says, who needed them.
"We were the only store open, we opened the door with flashlights, just to let the people come in and shop," Prickett said.
The response was overwhelming.
"Everybody kept saying thank you, thank you thank you and they've been saying it all day long, so you kind of got to get back sometimes."
Though he was frustrated with Entergy for keeping them in the dark for so long, he's relieved now the register is ringing again.
Clerk Rebecca Fry says she's just happy she's warm and the food is hot. Business is back.
It's also finally back to normal Monday in the service shop at Lander's Toyota in Little Rock.
Usually, this would be one of their busiest for sales and repairs, but in the dark last week service director Mike Greenway says all their work came basically to a halt.
"Anytime you take three working days out of a 23 day month, it's pretty drastic as far as lost business opportunity," Greenway said.
Greenway says it's too hard to put an exact dollar figure on just how much opportunity was lost though.
Now, he says they just have to work daylight to dark to get back on track. In fact, they are getting an influx of business Monday, in part because of repairs needed after that wintry weather.
Landers had borrowed a giant generator out of Houston, but they didn't end up having to use it. Thankfully their power came back on before they opened Saturday which is better than some of their business neighbors who had to wait even longer.
But without power, many cash registers were quiet.
That was the case at Prickett's store off Lawson Road in west Little Rock.
For five days, the store was anything but warm.
Without power, their business was on ice.
"We've pretty much had to cut all our vendors back because it's kind of a rolling stone," said owner Horace Prickett.
Prickett says they lost thousands of dollars at the pumps and in perishable food items.
But they didn't shut their doors to a community, he says, who needed them.
"We were the only store open, we opened the door with flashlights, just to let the people come in and shop," Prickett said.
The response was overwhelming.
"Everybody kept saying thank you, thank you thank you and they've been saying it all day long, so you kind of got to get back sometimes."
Though he was frustrated with Entergy for keeping them in the dark for so long, he's relieved now the register is ringing again.
Clerk Rebecca Fry says she's just happy she's warm and the food is hot. Business is back.
It's also finally back to normal Monday in the service shop at Lander's Toyota in Little Rock.
Usually, this would be one of their busiest for sales and repairs, but in the dark last week service director Mike Greenway says all their work came basically to a halt.
"Anytime you take three working days out of a 23 day month, it's pretty drastic as far as lost business opportunity," Greenway said.
Greenway says it's too hard to put an exact dollar figure on just how much opportunity was lost though.
Now, he says they just have to work daylight to dark to get back on track. In fact, they are getting an influx of business Monday, in part because of repairs needed after that wintry weather.
Landers had borrowed a giant generator out of Houston, but they didn't end up having to use it. Thankfully their power came back on before they opened Saturday which is better than some of their business neighbors who had to wait even longer.
