Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Storms slam Mountainburg
Confirmed tornado rips through Crawford County amid weather system
MOUNTAINBURG — A confirmed tornado ripped through this Crawford County town Friday afternoon, leveling 200-year-old trees and tearing roofs from buildings.
Four people were hospitalized, three people were rescued after being trapped in houses and 160 homes were damaged, said Brad Thomas, the emergency management coordinator for Crawford County. There were no fatalities.
Crawford County Deputy Jim Freeman said there were several minor injuries, and one woman went into labor during the storm.
“He brought us one and He didn’t take one, hopefully,” Freeman said while standing in the rain directing traffic away from downtown Mountainburg, where downed high-line wires blocked U.S. 71.
The tornado touched down as part of a slow-moving storm system, stretching from Minnesota to Louisiana, that raked across Arkansas. National Weather Services offices warned late Friday that more tornadoes were possible before the storm system exited Arkansas.
Farnese Kimes, 71, said she heard that a tornado was forecast to hit Mountainburg at 4:19 p.m. Friday. She took refuge in her bathroom and started praying that her children, who live elsewhere in town, would be safe. They were, but much of the roof was ripped away from Kimes’ rock house.
“God is good,” Kimes said. “My kids are OK, and if my kids are OK, these are just things,” she said pointing to her destroyed house. “If they’re good, I’m good.”
Thousands of people in Crawford County were without power late Friday afternoon. Mountainburg, population 624, sits just east of Interstate 49, about midway between Fort Smith and Fayetteville.
Devin Tillman, 30, of Springdale said he was driving south on I-49 in his Toyota Tundra when he saw
“circulation” come over a hill southwest of Mountainburg.
“It was a low-lying cloud, and it was moving quick,” Tillman said.
He stopped to shoot video from inside his truck, then realized that the tornado was almost on top of him.
“I didn’t know there was a tornado right behind it,” Tillman said. “I left my truck and took off running and got up underneath the underpass. A couple of other people were already there. It was super loud. It sounded just like a freight train rolling over you.”
About a minute and a half later, the tornado had moved through the area, Tillman said. The National Weather Service in Tulsa confirmed the tornado through storm reports, meteorologist Pete Snyder said. The weather service will survey Crawford and Franklin counties today to learn more about its size.
“Most of what we’re hearing so far is the damage [is] in Crawford County, by far, and that’s the only one we have confirmed,” Snyder said of the tornado.
In Howard County, tornado sirens sounded at Umpire, an unincorporated community south of Mena. No injuries were reported as of 8:30 p.m., but there was structural damage in Umpire and nearby Athens, said Brent Armstrong, a dispatcher with the Howard County sheriff’s office. State police confirmed that a twister touched down in an uninhabited part of Montgomery County, staying on the ground for about 4 minutes, said Gary Fox of the Montgomery County sheriff’s office. No injuries or property damage were reported, Fox said.
The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management received damage reports from Crawford, Sebastian, Howard and Polk counties, said Melody Daniel, deputy public information officer. Downed trees blocked roads in the town of Potter in Polk County, she said. As of 8 p.m., the department had received no confirmed reports of tornadoes outside of Mountainburg, she said. “There’s quite a bit of damage across the state,” Daniel said.
A mail carrier based at the Mountainburg Post Office was reported missing during the storm but was later “located safe and sound,” said Sam Bolen, a spokesman for the Postal Service. The carrier was “stuck for a while due to fallen trees and was out of cellphone range,” Bolen said.
Rickey Bowman, the county judge for Franklin County, said Charleston Mayor Sherman Hiatt had told him his farm on Arkansas 96 in Sebastian County was “wiped out.” Hiatt did not respond to calls from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette seeking further details.
The slow-moving system and the threat of tornadoes lingering late Friday over Texas and Louisiana north all the way to Iowa, The Associated Press reported.
Temperature swings are forecast in Arkansas over the next few days as a cold front pushes through. After high temperatures in the 70s Friday, they will dip below freezing in parts of north Arkansas early Sunday before rebounding into the 70s on Tuesday, said Brian Smith, senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock. “It’s springtime in Arkansas,” he said.