JONESBORO (Arkansas Advocate) — Willadean Hergott of Jonesboro clutched a stuffed toy monkey while sitting in the Craighead County safe room in Jonesboro Friday evening and waited for the next round of storms.
“I don’t like tornadoes. I don’t like seeing what happened in Lake City,” she said, referring to a twister that smashed the western edge of the Craighead County town Wednesday evening with winds of 150 mph.
“You never know anymore where one will come up,” she said.
Hergott sat in a chair inside the shelter, which has a capacity for 600 people. She said she had the monkey for her grandchildren who would show up shortly.
At 5 p.m. Friday, there were already 60 people inside the shelter, which can withstand 250 mph winds. Storms did not reach Jonesboro until around 9 p.m. Friday. Large television screens inside the shelter showed live weather coverage from the local ABC television affiliate.
On Wednesday, more than 800 packed into the shelter. Deputies had to turn back another 200 people because it was overcrowded.
Rachael Townsend also went to the shelter Friday, hours before the inclement weather hit.
She moved to Jonesboro about a week before a tornado hit the town on March 28, 2020, and is still shaken by the memory.
“I have PTSD,” Townsend said. “I have really bad storm anxiety. I can’t sleep at night anymore because of these storms.”
Townsend stayed in a friend’s storm shelter when the Lake City tornado struck. Lake City is about 15 miles east of Jonesboro. This time, she said, she sought safety early.
Storm anxieties have ramped up since early March when the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, forecast an extremely high potential for tornadoes in Arkansas on March 14. Twisters hit Cave City, Cushman and Diaz that evening, validating people’s fears. Three died in Cushman and 32 were injured in those storms, the Arkansas Public Safety Department reported.
Then, the March 28 tornado hit Bay, Lake City and Monette, injuring four people and damaging 25 structures. Another storm hammered Cross County Friday evening, and on Saturday, the National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for Craighead, Crittenden, Cross, Mississippi, Poinsett and St. Francis counties.
Torrential rains hindered cleanup efforts in the tornado-ravaged areas Saturday, but it also created record level river-flooding, adding to the mounting fears.
The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management reported Sunday that there have been 13 injuries and one fatality related to Friday’s and Saturday’s storms. The fatality was a 5-year-old child at a home in Pulaski County.
In Hardy, the Spring River rose to 23.5 feet by late Saturday afternoon. Flood stage there is 10 feet. Water covered a riverside park and lapped against railroad tracks that cut through the town.
“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” Hardy Fire Chief Joshua Moore said of the flooding. ‘”We had advanced warning this was coming since Tuesday, and we warned people that they needed to evacuate.”
Emergency officials did rescue two people trapped by high waters Saturday morning, he said. Rapids also washed out a train trestle in Mammoth Springs, he said.
“This has been a lot,” he said. “Four weeks ago, we had wildfires. Then we had the tornadoes on March 14, more wildfires and now flooding.
“As best as I can tell, people here are staying home and out of all the weather,” Moore added. “My guys are tired, but we’re not quitting.”
The White River in Newport, where the flood stage is 26 feet, is expected to crest at 33 feet Tuesday. The record stage there is 35.9 feet.
The Buffalo River in St. Joe is forecast to crest at 48 feet Sunday. Flood stage is 27 feet.
President Donald Trump issued a federal disaster declaration for much of Arkansas Saturday, releasing funds for cleanup and rebuilding. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders made the request in a 12-page letter earlier in the week, saying damage from the storms exceeded $11.6 million and estimated debris removal costs $3.7 million.
Sanders also released $250,000 from the state’s emergency fund for cleanup efforts.
In addition to the rains Saturday, the National Weather Service issued several tornado warnings in Craighead, Crittenden, Cross, Mississippi, Poinsett and St. Francis counties. For the fourth time since the safe room first opened in the new Craighead County Courthouse Annex building in early March, people crowded into the shelter.
“There’s always a lot of hype with storms,” Craighead County Office of Emergency Management Director Anthony Coy said. “People post pictures all over Facebook and social media. There is massive community storm anxiety.”
He said storm chasers flood YouTube with videos of storms and the seeming constant live reports on local television add to the fear.
On Friday, scores of chasers swarmed into Arkansas in expectation of severe weather, increasing the already heightened fears of Arkansans. One storm chaser, while live streaming his trip on YouTube, called out, “Here, ’nado, ’nado, ’nado,” as he drove through Newport.
“Fears and anxieties can be caused by a lot of variables,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Jeff Hood in North Little Rock. “Everybody reacts to trauma differently. They see the media pictures of all the damage from tornadoes every day lately. The media conveys how dangerous it is.”
He said it’s rare that meteorologists deal with the constant weather events like they’ve had this time.
“We were talking about that,” Hood said. “It’s been 10 or 20 years since we’ve had something like this. It’s not typical that we have something day after day after day.
“It’s unfortunate that we’re seeing all these ingredients line up like they’re doing,” he said. “Arkansas is in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Advocate Editor Sonny Albarado contributed to this story.
