Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Work continues on damage from June's severe storms

More than a month after storms ravaged Nevada County, work continues to clean up the mess they left behind.

Nevada County Judge James Roy Brown said all the roads have been cleared, with the debris pushed into the ditches. County road crews have been hauling gravel to try and repair the washouts, but have been hampered by the rain.

"We've been hauling gravel for washouts between showers," Brown said. "It's all coming along, but we like a good bit. If we had two or three weeks of dry weather we'd be able to get all the washouts fixed."

Those two or three weeks haven't happened as this has been one of the most unusual summers on record where rainfall is concerned. Along with raining most of June, the first three days of July saw the area drenched with heavy showers.

Nevada County has been declared a federal disaster area because of the storm damage, Brown said. "We'll get some money, but I don't know how much." This is because the federal government will pay 75 percent of the cleanup costs, the state will pick up 12.5 percent of the tab and the county is responsible for the rest.

Brown has been keeping up with who's been working to help with the cleanup, and what equipment has been used. This, he said, is because the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) pays different amounts for different equipment. "There's a chart telling how much they pay for equipment. We can bill them back for it.

"The roads are in worse shape now than at any time I've been judge," he continued. "It's all because of the weather. We'll get back."

The rural water project is also hindering the cleanup effort, Brown said. This is because the construction crew is required, under the terms of the contract, to clean up after itself. This poses a problem when the county is working in the same area. "We've got to work around them. We don't want to fix what the water crews mess up."

Once the washouts have been dealt with, Brown said, county crews will begin dealing with cleaning out the ditches. Once the cleanup effort has ended, he added, the county road crews can get back on track and work on other projects, such as pulling ditches.

The storms hit on Memorial Day weekend. On Sunday, May 30, storms ripped through the area drenching the county with heavy rains, while high winds left considerable property damage in its wake.

The second storm arrived on June 2, with winds being clocked between 80-100 miles per hour. Brown said what made the second storm so devastating is the ground was still saturated from the May 30 rains. The soft ground combined with the high winds resulted in trees being blown over onto houses and into yards.

The May storm, according to Brown, took out the center third of county roads, with rain covering Highway 371 and Highway 53. Parts of the county received 15 inches of rain from the two storm systems.

Though the county road crews began work after the first storm, their efforts proved to be in vain as the second storm simply washed the newly poured gravel away as there had been no time to get it packed down properly.

Fortunately, though, neither of the storms resulted in anyone being hurt. Jim Cross, county director of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management (ADEM), said several homes were damaged in the first storm, but none were destroyed.

According to Cross, an F-0 tornado went through the area, but caused little damage. F-0 is the lowest rating for a tornado on the Fujita scale, which measures the wind speed of a twister. Tornadoes are rated from F-0 to F-5.

But, Cross said, problems were caused when trees were blown across Interstate 30. This resulted in several accidents with no injuries. However, several semi trucks were blown over by the high winds.

The storm's path took it to Emmet, where it apparently turned right and headed for Bodcaw and Rosston. No part of Emmet was spared the storm's wrath.

Hurricane force winds blew trees over on houses, homes were damaged as were other out buildings. The city's shop was completely destroyed by the winds.

Oak trees in Emmet's cemetery were uprooted and had to be cut away from the grades.

Emmet, along with other parts of Southern Nevada County, wound up without power for several days. Dale Booker, Emmet's mayor, said electricity was restored to the city's wells first so people could have water.

Prescott, however, got off light, comparatively. Though limbs were blown off trees and several houses had roof damage, there was relatively little damage. Of course, the city did have a power outage from about 8 p.m. until 3:30 a.m. on June 2-3, but, according to Mayor Howard Taylor, this was because of problems with the feeder lines from Entergy, not the city's equipment.

Meanwhile, work continues to get the mess cleared up across Nevada County.