Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Ice Cripples Area: Gurdon Gripped In Cold

Those wanting a white Christmas in Gurdon got their wish, but not in the manner they wanted.

Instead of snow the area was hammered for the second time in 12 days by a wintry mix of freezing rain and sleet.

The end result was a lack of electricity and phone service, while Gurdon residents scrambled to gather such staples as milk and bread.

Runs were also made on local stores, when they could open, for batteries and anything else that could be used either to help provide either contact to the outside world or stay warm.

The freezing rain began falling around 9:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve and didn't stop until late Tuesday, Dec. 26. Then it fell off and on Wednesday and Thursday. However, the temperature climbed Thursday, thawing out many people and especially trees and power lines.

The area was bleached to a frosty white during this period, but Gurdon had electricity until around 6:30 a.m. Christmas Day. At this time the city was plunged into darkness.

Periodically the electricity came back on, but never stayed on for more than a few hours.

At 11:30 a.m. Wednesday it went out and wasn't back on Thursday, Dec. 29, after 4:00 p.m.

When calling the toll-free number to Entergy a recording stated the Gurdon-Arkadelphia-Malvern area was the hardest hit, with more than 19,000 customers being left without power.

Across the state Entergy had more than 180,000 customers in the dark, while the total with all electric companies made it 315,000 without electricity in the south part of the state.

The deadline, according to the message, for getting electricity restored is Jan. 4, 2001. But this is only if there isn't any more winter weather to cause further damage and some weather reports indicated that this area could be hit again.

Gurdon lost phone service Wednesday evening, because of lines being down due to trees and limbs.

A representative from Southwestern Bell said it could take until Jan. 10 to get all SWB customers talking again.

The main reason it will take so long to get phone service restored is because the storm that hit Arkansas also ravaged north Texas and much of Oklahoma where SWB operates.

Normally crews are sent from all over to the site of an emergency, but in this instance there are more emergencies than there are crews.

Southwestern Bell officials said the first to get phone service restored will be hospitals, followed by law enforcement/emergency services then businesses. Residential customers will be the last to get their phones working. Only a phone now and then would work late Thursday.

Southwestern Bell operates in a five-state area, and in the three states hammered by winter weather more than one million customers are without the use of their phones. It was unknown exactly how many in Arkansas were left without telephone access.

All week long the sound of limbs breaking, trees falling and ice coming off from power lines could be heard.

The streets in Gurdon were a sloppy mess with the mud mixed with the slush, but they were passable.

Jim Caldwell, Gurdon street superintendent, said his crews weren't going to move the slush to the curbs, as they did two weeks earlier when the first storm hit.

Most stores in the downtown area were closed Tuesday. Thomason's Big Star opened when the power returned around 10 a.m. and was swamped by customers pillaging the shelves of milk, bread and batteries.

By the end of the day few D' cell batteries could be found anywhere.

Touring the area was like touring a war zone. A tree laid across the back of a house on Cherry Street, while limbs were on just about everything that didn't move.

Trees were uprooted, bent over, broken and basically pinned to the ground with the weight of the ice.

Highway 53 was passable with tree cutting crews working to clear limbs from power lines. Still, in many areas, trees and limbs remained on the lines while several lines were down and some utility poles had snapped. But there was neither electricity nor phone service to the area at the time.

Gurdon was a ghost town early Wednesday morning as the streets were dark. However, utility crews and other emergency personnel were roaming the streets doing what they could to combat the problem.Power came back on around 6:15 a.m., lasting until 11:30, when it went down for the count.

While it remained cold the temperature rarely dropped below the mid 20s. Winds caused it to feel colder than this, but as each day wore on, more and more ice melted, especially Wednesday night and Thursday.

The Gurdon Times had to suspend publication of its Dec. 27 edition because of the storm and subsequent power outage.

The Times is printed by the Hope Star, but all the city of Hope was without electricity.

In fact from the Arkansas-Texas border to Mena and over to Little Rock was without electricity because of the storm.

Publisher Ricky Ragsdale called newspapers in the area about printing the Times, but none had electricity. There was a possibility this edition was printed over the weekend "just to be on the safe side," Ragsdale said. He did not want to miss this week's run.

Gurdon merchants profited from the storm as people from Prescott and Nevada County were forced to come to the south Clark County community to purchase groceries and gasoline, along with other needs.

Two stations in Gurdon were pumping gasoline, Red-E-Mart on Highway 53 and Calley's Fina Station on Highway 67.

However, when the power went out the Red-E-Mart pumps were shut down.

Johnny Calley borrowed a generator from Rickett's and continued pumping gas to customers. At 4:00 p.m. Wednesday there was a line from his pumps to Plyler's Hardware waiting to fill up or top off their tanks. In fact people were filling just about every container they could with gasoline to help make it through this disaster.

Parts of Arkansas were declared disaster areas by Gov. Mike Huckabee. President Bill Clinton was expected to sign a federal emergency bill into law as well.

Congressman-elect Mike Ross spent three days on the phone trying to get the affected areas of Arkansas some help from the state and federal government.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), he said, will help by providing generators to help get the governments and infrastructures of communities operational again, while also helping open roads.

Ross said this type of disaster is different than when a tornado hits.

With a tornado, he said, normally only one area is affected and crews can be sent from different places to help. In this instance, though, almost the entire south half of the state has been affected and emergency crews were spread thin.

State Senator-elect Percy Malone has also been working to help those affected by the first "official" storm of winter.

Malone called the Office of Emergency Services to see where Clark and Nevada counties stood, and to get generators to provide electricity for hospitals and law enforcement entities.

Once these have power, he said, the next step would be to make sure generators were available to grocery stores and gas stations so people could purchase the goods they need.

This disaster will, in many ways, be worse than the tornado of March 1, 1997.

While the twister destroyed homes and trees the damage was confined to specific areas.

This winter storm, though, ravaged the southern half of the state, leaving no one unaffected.

The biggest damage could be to the forestry crop, as young pine trees have been bent, broken and/or uprooted, making them good for nothing but pulp, and barely this.

It is unknown how bad the timber industry will be affected by the storm.