Flooding forces evacuation in southwest Arkansas
Emergency teams from three counties poured truckloads of sand and rock on a damaged Red River levee and pumped seeping water back into the river Friday after fears of a late night breach forced the evacuation of Garland.
The Red River, which enters the state from Texas north of Texarkana and winds its way south to Louisiana, crested Friday morning at 5 feet above flood stage in Fulton.
All but three or four people left the Miller County town of 240 near midnight Thursday, when members of an emergency command post noticed a farm pond’s levee crumbling beside the Red River levee, said David Slater, the deputy coordinator for the Miller County Office of Emergency Management.
Water from the flooded river seeped under the earthen levee and into the pond, causing the pond’s levee to begin eroding, he said.
“It kept caving in and got to about two feet from the [ Red River] levee,” Slater said. “It was kind of scary for a while.”
Sheriff deputies drove through Garland, using sirens and loudspeakers and going door- to- door to alert resi-
dents of the mandatory evacuation. Buses took the residents to the Beech Street First Baptist Church in Texarkana — about 20 miles west of Garland — where they stayed overnight.
Most of the residents left Friday morning and returned to Garland, said pastor Richard Posey. Nine remained in the shelter. He said he would keep the shelter open for as long as needed.
Emergency officials said Friday that they expected to let residents back into their homes todaySAT once the levee is repaired.
U. S. Army Corps of Engineers officials inspected the levees Friday, while scores of county dump trucks brought sand and rock to repair the breach.
Garland Mayor Tyesheeka Antwine said about 25 feet of the levee near her town was damaged, and water was beginning to come through it.
No homes were damaged, she said.
Antwine was among the few who chose to stay in the town to “ride it out.”
“The evacuation was done as a precaution,” she said. “But we wanted to be safe.”
Workers also used pumps to pour water leaking from the levee into the pond to try to place pressure against the stressed levee.
Earlier in the week, Office of Emergency Management teams found more than 30 “sand boils,” or seepage in the levee system, south of Garland and repaired them with sand bags. The term “sand boils” refers to sandy- colored water bubbling from beneath a levee that indicates the levee is eroding from underneath due to pressure from a swollen river.
“Sand boils are the earliest warning signs that a levee is taking on water,” said Jay Woods, a spokesman for the Corps in Little Rock. “You want the levee to tell you something is wrong before it fails.”
Workers place sand bags around the “boils” and monitor them, looking for clear water to ensure the levee is no longer eroding from underneath.
“We’re building those areas back up,” Slater said of the levee boils in Miller County. “It’s looking in better shape now.”
He said he expects the water to remain high for at least three to four more weeks before the river returns to its banks.
A spokesman for the Lafayette County judge’s office said County Judge Mike Rowe and others toured the levees on the Lafayette County side of the Red River on Friday and found no problems.
The Red River and Arkansas River began flooding in early May after 10 to 15 inches of rain fell in eastern Oklahoma, eastern Texas and western Arkansas. Runoff from those rains cascaded into the rivers, and reservoirs filled to their capacities, causing the flooding.
In Fulton, the river is expected to slowly recede and reach to a predicted 28.2 feet on Wednesday.
Further north at Index, the Red River crested at 31.4 feet Thursday afternoon and began slowly dropping. National Weather Service hydrologists expected it to fall to 29.5 feet by this evening and to 25.3 feet by Wednesday.
More rain is forecast for the area over the next few days, but it shouldn’t impact flooding, said National Weather Service meteorologist Mario Valverde of Shreveport. There are chances for short- lived “pop up” thunderstorms this weekend, and a more organized system is expected to bring up to half an inch of rain into the Red River basin on Tuesday.
“As long as we don’t see much rain from now until Tuesday, it will give the river time to do its thing,” Valverde said. “I think Arkansas will be in good shape.”
The Arkansas River continued receding Friday, as well, although the river in Pine Bluff was still more than 3 feet above flood stage.
More than 200 homes had water in them, said Wesley Hunt, a worker with the Jefferson County Office of Emergency Management. Many of the homes are in Island Harbor Estates, an area near Pine Bluff Regional Park that is inside the levee system near the river.
The river flowed at a rate of 368,000 cubic feet per second at the Emmett Sanders Lock and Dam in Pine Bluff on Friday afternoon. Further upstream, the river flowed at 372,000 cubic feet per second. The normal rate for the Arkansas River is 40,000 to 50,000 cubic feet per second.
In Fort Smith, the river was measured at 122,000 cubic feet per second Friday; on Monday, it raged at 360,000 cubic feet per second.
“The drop is coming,” Wood said. “But we will probably see a month or more of high flows on the river.”
The Corps issues small craft advisories for when the river rate is 70,000 cubic feet or more.
The Arkansas River continues to drop, but the rapid flow is caused, in part, by water pouring into the river from creeks and streams, Woods said. Because the river was so high earlier this week, water backed into the smaller tributaries and could not flow into the river.
Now that the river has receded, that water from the tributaries is pouring into it, adding to the rate of flow and prolonging its return to normal currents.
“We’re looking at warning people to stay off the river for three or for more weeks at least,” Woods said. “The river is still high, and navigation aids are still submerged. If someone in a fiberglass bass boat were to hit a rock [ channel weir] at 30 miles per hour, it could be a tragedy.”
Water still flowed rapidly at the Toad Suck Lock and Dam on Friday, said Holly Pearson, an employee of the Toad Suck One Stop on Arkansas 60 in Bigelow.
“It’s high and swift moving,” she said. “I can still see a lot of debris going down the river.”
Upstream on the Arkansas River, water still flowed at the Dardanelle Lock and Dam at 140,000 cubic feet per second, down from its peak of 340,000 earlier this week.
The river was so intense at one point that it shot basketball-- sized rocks lining the bank at the Corps’ Old Post Road Park in Russellville about 20 feet into the air and onto the nearby parking lot, said park ranger Scott Fryer.
Water from earlier flooding eroded land beneath a road near the lock and dam, and Corps’ officials have closed it to pedestrians until flooding subsides.
“We’re expecting to see longterm flows hold at about 140,000 cubic feet per second for the rest of the month,” Fryer said. “The river still has so much power.
“We were lucky last week,” he said. “Had we got the rain forecasted, we could have been in trouble. If we got six to eight inches more of rain over the Memorial Day weekend, I might be sitting here with a snorkel today.”