Flood spares some
Jefferson County residents go back to hard-hit homes
Greg and Lanette James return from getting a look Thursday at their home and others in the Riverside Drive neighborhood in Pine Bluff. Their house was spared, but others weren’t as fortunate. As waters recede, many Jefferson County residents are finding stunning damage to their properties.
WRIGHT — Residents in the hardest-hit areas of Jefferson County are getting their first look at what is left of their homes after near-record flooding along the Arkansas River.
High waters in Wright-Pastoria, Swan Lake and Island Harbor Estates have kept many residents out of their homes for as long as two weeks, but many have begun returning this week and have been stunned by what they have found.
A heavy, fetid odor of river water, mud, mold and rot hung heavy in the air Wednesday along White’s Lane, Sunset Bay Road, Fisher Adams Road and throughout a portion of the community that sits inside the levee system. At one home on White’s Lane, a woman stood outside a house wearing mud-covered boots with a face mask around her neck and tears in her eyes as she stared at the ruins. Watermarks tracing the progression of the river ran all the way up to the eaves on many of the homes that line the muddy streets.
Becky Lowe has lived in the community for 21 years on land that her grandfather began farming in 1936.
“He was a resettlement farmer out of El Dorado,” she said. “He started with 40 acres and a house and he farmed the land to pay it off.”
Lowe doesn’t plan to stay on the land she inherited. She said she’s done after at least 6 feet of water ran through her home on White’s Lane.
“At least it’s dried up some,” she said as she maneuvered her four-wheeldrive pickup through the muck.
She opened the door to her home, which was empty except for two inches of slimy, stinking mud that coated the carpets.
“We knew a week before it hit us that it was coming,” Lowe said. “So we emptied out our home, completely.”
She pointed to three houses nestled alongside one another.
“That house, that one, and this one,” she said. “We had to hire help because my mother-in-law doesn’t have a husband, my sister, who lives in that house, she doesn’t have a husband, and I only have one husband. We were getting spread pretty thin because we’re the youngest of
all of them.”
Sheetrock was peeling throughout the house, and carpet was bunched up underfoot. In the dim light, mold could be seen forming just above the waterline, which was about six feet high in some places. The only thing in the home that appeared to have escaped damage was a “kitchen witch” figurine attached to the ceiling above the sink in the kitchen.
In the bathroom, a shower stall was knocked loose from its mountings, and laid over against the bathtub.
“You know, the people who didn’t get their stuff out have it 10 times worse than I do,”Lowe said. “At least I don’t have the furniture and stuff to have to deal with.”
Another sister, who lives on Ray Dean Road, about a mile away near Lock and Dam No. 5, thought her home would be safe from the flood until it was too late.
Phyllis Crow had spent the week before the flood helping Lowe move furniture, then discovered the flood was going to hit her home as well. By the time she realized she was in the path of the floodwaters, Crow said, it was too late to get anything out.
She stacked as many of her possessions as she could to get things away from the water, but the bulk of her furniture sat in water that reached about 18 inches inside her house.
“All of my cabinets are toast,” Crow said. “I told [the Office of Emergency Services] that I was in the process of figuring out how I wanted to remodel the house, and now I guess we’re going to find out because it is going to get remodeled.”
Unlike her sister, Crow said she will dry out her home, make repairs and continue to live along the river.
“I’ve got insurance so we’ll be OK,” she said. “I’ve been in this house for 24 years, and I’m not ready to move.”
Sarah Oliger , who manages the shelter set up at the Wright-Patterson Volunteer Fire Department, said Thursday that eight people are staying inside the shelter and that several more are living in recreational vehicles or tents set up outside.
“We’re feeding about 40 people a day,” she said. “I guess we’ll keep doing that as long as we need to, or as long as we can.”
About 35 miles southeast, in the Swan Lake area near Reydell, Rebecca Luther and her daughter, Riverley, watched over the shelter that has been set up at the Swan Lake Volunteer Fire Department. Cots lined the walls, and inside the truck bays firetrucks competed for space with stacks of furniture and personal possessions that people had saved from the flood.
“Everybody is gone either to work or to work on their houses,” Luther said. “We live up the road where the water wasn’t supposed to flood. I got a foot of water inside my house.”
Luther said about 40 homes were affected by high water.
“Some are just duck camps,” she said. “There’s about 30 of us who live down there year-round, but every home down there was damaged.”
Several of those houses wound up sitting in water almost up to the roof.
“This is my third flood, and it is by far the worst,” Luther said.
She said the shelter opened about three weeks ago and is home to six people, with about another 20 who come and go. She said the American Red Cross has donated cleaning kits and bottled water. Food has come from the Salvation Army and the Church of Christ on Hazel Street in Pine Bluff, which also donated box fans. The Quapaw Nation has donated about 75 cases of water.
“They came by yesterday and dropped it off,” she said. “People have helped a lot, which is good, because we’re planning to stay open until we can all get back into our homes.”
Closer to Pine Bluff, Tom and Christine Beckert of Nashville, Tenn., piloted an American Red Cross vehicle down the levee toward Island Harbor Estates carrying bottled water and snacks.
“This is one of our Next Gen ERVs,” Christine Beckert said. “That stands for emergency response vehicle. It can serve as a command center, we can interview people inside privately, carry supplies, or feed an entire community a hot meal out of the back.”
The large, high-profile van with the distinctive markings of the Red Cross also has a public address system that allowed Beckert to call out to areas to let people know the Red Cross was there. Often, she said, in addition to hot meals, they leave people with sandwiches and snacks for later.
“That’s so they have something decent to eat that they don’t have to heat up,” she said. “Because it’s a lot of stress and you need some extra calories when you’re trying to clean out your home.”
She said they also leave behind clean-up kits consisting of bleach, disinfectants, wipes, a rake and other needed implements.
“We also check on communities or even see if there are communities that got missed,” Beckert said. “We relay that information back to our headquarters.”
She said one area that had nearly been overlooked was the Desha County community of Pendleton.
“The information we had was that they needed snacks and water, but when we got there we found out the whole community was displaced,” Christine Beckert said. “So we were told to prepare a shelter for 30 people, which we got up and running yesterday. Eighty people showed up.”
At Island Harbor Estates, the Beckerts talked with Robert and Linda Johnson, who have been waiting for water to recede so they can begin moving furniture out of their home.
“Everyone told us we didn’t have to worry, that we were up high enough,” Robert Johnson said. “Well, the water came up right under our windows. We got about 16 inches in the house.”
Luckily, he said, they had stacked all of their furniture up 25 inches on blocks, but they can’t get in to retrieve the furniture until the water level lowers.
“Everything is blocking the walls, which we need to tear out and replace,” he said.
“We’re hoping by this weekend we can drive completely up to our house,” Linda Johnson said. “Then we can get to work.”
Along Riverside Drive, homes sit on either side of the only road leading in and out of the community. Almost all of the homes next to the river flooded, with many getting water as high as the attic. On the opposite side of the road, the high side, homes were thought to be safe.
Most were, but not all. Greg and Lanette James, who live on the high side of the street, said water got deep enough to get inside a few. Their home was spared, but not by much.
“It got to within about 18 inches from our door,” Greg James said.
He said one of the hardest things has been seeing the destruction his neighbors have suffered.
“It’s awful,” James said. “These are really friendly people who live down here, but to see their faces after the water started going down, as they began to realize the extent of the damage, you just don’t know what to say.”