Bentonville-A county official said Monday that a storm swept across Benton County Central Communications Corporation on Friday night, causing power outages.

County Public Safety Administrator Robert McGowan said he was notified at 7:27 pm on Friday that the Central Communications Company (commonly known as CenCom) was using generators to supply electricity. He said that Central Communications lost power from the generator at 7:55 in the evening.

Central Communications is located in the basement of the county administrative building in the city center.

"The power outage was because the generator stopped running after 15 minutes," McGowan said. "When the generator fails, the backup battery uses up all its power and fails."

McGowen said that the generator supplier sent someone to the scene and restarted the generator within 15 minutes of being notified. After the generator restarted, the backup battery system failed to reset. He said that the manual reset of the battery backup system restored power, and the central communication was back online at 9:05 pm.

McGowen said the supplier was on-site on Monday to try to determine the cause of the generator failure. County officials are getting quotes for replacement battery backup systems.

McGowen said that during the power outage of Central Communications, 911 calls were forwarded to Bentonville. He said that dispatchers have handheld radios that can communicate with police, fire and emergency medical services.

County Facilities Administrator Bryan Beeson said that the fence between the Juvenile Justice Center and the Bentonville Road Department was torn down and a wall of the Decatur County Road Department building was damaged by the storm. He said there were no loss estimates at either location, and the contractor plans to visit both locations on Monday.

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