Storms leave damage locally & parts of South

— By BRADLY GILL

Staff writer

A round of storms had state and county road crews working to clear roadways over the weekend in Ouachita County.

County Judge Robert McAdoo told the Camden News that he estimates that around 14 trees fell in various parts of the county, but he stated that most of the damage was isolated in the northwest parts of the county.

“We’ve had a hard weekend of work,” the judge said. “My road guys worked extremely hard working with the Chidester Fire Department, Bearden Fire Department and Ouachita Electric. We had a big, long weekend this weekend.”

He also stated that while there were no road closures, culverts were washed out on Ouachita Roads 18, 51 and 53, and he suspected that with more rain, Ouachita 6 in Tate’s Bluff would go back underwater with the rising of the Ouachita River.

“The river is coming up and it doesn’t take a whole lot to shut that road down,” said McAdoo. “We had to do a lot of work on County 3 last week on Thursday to try and get it back open. We had to work a dozer for five hours in the middle of a county road… We had mud piled up to five feet just trying to get down to a hard base on the road. We had a resident get stuck in the middle of the road. That’s a priority when we have a resident get stuck in the middle of a county road.”

McAdoo added that on Sunday in Bearden along Arkansas 264, a tree fell onto a house and also took down power lines as it landed on a butane tank. Ouachita Electric Cooperative Corporation cut power to the line,s and Southern LP used a handsaw to remove limbs so the tree could be removed from the tank.

A butane line was also broken from the falling debris.

Camden Public Works Director Shamir Dorsey said there was flash flooding on Columbia Road and that workers with the Arkansas Highway Department removed a downed tree on U.S. 79.

No other damage was reported in the city. However, the area around Sandy Beach will most likely see further flooding as the river rises mid-week.

Other parts of Arkansas - along with portions of other southern states - were not as fortunate as Ouachita County during the weekend storms, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

In Arkansas, Entergy spokesman Kerri Case said 3,200 customers were without power statewide as of Sunday afternoon. Most of the power failures were in Pulaski and Hot Spring counties.

“The ground was really saturated when the storm came in, so we had trees falling down from the roots, which is unusual for a storm with 40 mph” winds, Case said.

“Downed trees have slowed down the restoration process, but we have crews working on it.”

Entergy Arkansas’ power-failure maps showed more than 3,300 customers without power in Pulaski County as of 6:30 p.m. Saturday and more than 19,200 without electricity statewide, the Dem-Gazette reports.

Nearly 90,000 customers were reported without electricity in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Georgia as of midday Sunday.

At least one person was killed and about two dozen others were injured after a suspected tornado struck the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site in east Texas during an American Indian cultural event Saturday afternoon in Alto, about 130 miles southeast of Dallas. County Judge Chris Davis of Cherokee County said the fatality was a woman. In neighboring Houston County, the sheriff’s office said one person was killed in Weches, six miles southwest of Caddo Mound.

There was widespread damage in Alto, a town of about 1,200 people, and the school district canceled classes until its buildings can be deemed safe.

A tornado Saturday morning flattened much of the south side of Franklin, Texas, overturning mobile homes and damaging other residences, said Robertson County Sheriff Gerald Yezak. Franklin is about 125 miles south of Dallas. The National Weather Service said preliminary information showed that an EF3 tornado touched down in that area, packing winds of 140 mph.

The tornado destroyed 55 homes, a church, four businesses, a duplex, and part of the local housing authority building, authorities said. Two people were hospitalized with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, and others were treated at the scene, Yezak said. Some people had to be extricated from damaged buildings.

The Democrat-Gazette also reports:

• On Saturday at about 3 p.m., two children were killed on a back road in east Texas when a pine tree fell onto the car in which they were riding during a severe thunderstorm near Pollok, about 150 miles southeast of Dallas.

The tree “flattened the car like a pancake,” said Capt. Alton Lenderman of the Angelina County sheriff’s office. The children, ages 8 and 3, died at the scene. Both parents, who were in the front seat, escaped injury, he said.

• Heavy rains and storms raked Mississippi late into the night Saturday as the storms moved east.

Roy Ratliff, 95, died after a tree crashed onto his trailer during a potential tornado late Saturday in northeastern Mississippi, Monroe County Road Manager Sonny Clay said at a news conference. Nineteen people were taken to hospitals, including two in critical condition. A tornado was reported in the area about 140 miles southeast of Memphis at the time.

In Hamilton, Miss., 72-year-old Robert Scott said he had been sleeping in his recliner late Saturday when he was awakened and found himself in his yard after a tornado ripped most of his home off its foundation.

His 71-year-old wife, Linda, was in a different part of the house and also survived, he said.

They found each other while crawling through the remnants of the house they had lived in since 1972.

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