OBEC, Municipal Utilities working around the clock to restore electricity.

Once Saturday’s tornadoes fully passed through the region around midnight, electrical linemen leapt into action and have not slowed since.

According to General Manager David Schremp, Ozark Border Electric Cooperative logged over 10,000 outages shortly after the tornado, mostly in Butler, Carter and Ripley counties.

“Butler was primarily right around the Poplar Bluff area. Ripley was west of Doniphan and Carter was the same way, west and north of Van Buren,” he said.

Around 2,500 outages were fixed by 6 a.m. and as of 2:30 p.m., only 4,453 remained.

“Access has been a real difficult issues with this one,” Schremp noted.

Linemen contended with pitch black, rain, wind, and blocked roads to reach broken poles and lines. Many of these were entangled in fallen trees and other debris. In another complication OBEC’s supplier lost power to four substations. It will be impossible to know if some lines are truly fixed until power is restored.

Assistance was due to arrive Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. Four regional co-ops from outside the disaster zone were supplying between 22-24 linemen. Schremp was hopeful power would be fully restored Monday.

In the rush to turn the lights back on, Schremp refuses to sacrifice his employee’s safety.

“I know some people will feel negatively about this, but I’m puling guys back at dark — around 7 p.m.,” he said.

Many had worked a full day before being called out last night and had not rested since then.

“We’re going to et a good night’s rest and tackle it tomorrow with our reinforcements,” Schremp said.

In the aftermath of the storm, Lyndell Coleman of Poplar Bluff Municipal Utilities reported 2,900 customers were without power. At 5:45 p.m. Saturday, the number was down to about 1,000.

"We've got a lot of poles to change out...it's just going to be time consuming. We got over 1000 people still out, and those will take probably twice to three times as long as getting bunches on at a time," Coleman said. He estimated it could take two to three more days to completely restore power. "There are a lot of services down that just feed individual houses, and those will be the last ones we go to, because we got to get all of our primary back up first."

Municipal Utilities received help Saturday from Nixa, Monett, Columbia, Hannibal, and Conway, Arkansas began arriving around 2 p.m. Saturday to help. The extra hands were a welcome sight for local crews.

"They're very, very tired," Coleman noted.

The community has been "great" he added, especially in providing food for workers. But too much attention has been a hindrance at times, particularly, "all the gawking people driving up and down the roads in our way."

This story was updated with Lyndell Coleman's quotes at 6:04 p.m. March 15.