Sun 23 Mar 2008
Arkansas Flooding
Posted by ME under Arkansas, disasters
Tags: Arkansas, Batesville, flooding, natural disasters, White River
The weather was so beautiful in Central Arkansas this weekend that it’s hard to imagine that some parts of the state are under the threat of serious flooding in the next few days.
All of this is the result of the torrential rains that hit Missouri and Arkansas last week. Streams and rivers in northeast Arkansas have been bloated by water pouring downstream from southeastern Missouri.
On Saturday, a levee on the Black River, a tributary of the White River, ruptured a levee in two places near Pocahontas, Arkansas, closing portions of Highway 67.
On that same day, the White River was estimated to be at about 38 feet — 12 feet above flood stage. And so for maybe the 2,000th-time in it’s history, the White County city of Georgetown (pop. 126) has been completely isolated by waters from the White River and may stay that way for a week.
Governor Beebe has already declared 35 Arkansas counties disaster areas.
I know it hardly qualifies as a disaster but part of the bike trail I use in Searcy was under water on Friday from a couple creeks that feed into the Little Red River. I was expecting the water to be down today but it wasn’t — that’s when the complexity of this flooding really hit me.
My friend NNT took these photos of the flooding along the White River at Batesville in Independence County last week. You cans see more photos here.
The only good thing to say about this natural disaster is that it’s given people time to get out of the way and so the most significant damage will be to property and not people.
Update: Another friend sent these photos of the flooding around Georgetown and West Point along Highway 36.. Sorry, no shots of the Georgetown One-Stop. I suppose they’ll only be serving catfish to locals for the next week or so.
h/t: nnt & wa
2 Responses to “ Arkansas Flooding ”
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March 24th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I hope the national guard arrives in Georgetown to make sure the fish place isn’t damaged.
March 24th, 2008 at 8:20 am
I was in Batesville for Easter this weekend. The water had receded from the viaduct and things in town were returning to normal. Batesville got off easy (a few houses suffered some damage, the fiber optic junction station which supplies phone service went out, and one woman nearly got washed away when she drove off into water one night that she didn’t see coming) compared to towns further down river (like Oil Trough and Macks, all of which set right on the river banks without levee protection and are under water) or further up river (Calico Rock and Guion, up on hills above the river, but narrow flood plains).
Funny thing about the viaduct you see in the first picture: It was built in the early 80’s to replace an older steel bridge into town. At that time, the Highway Department stated that the new viaduct and bridge system would be enough to withstand the next 100 year flood and avoid cutting Batesville off from the rest of the county. In 1982, less than two years after the new bridge and viaduct the last time Independence County suffered flooding of this magnitude, the road had to be cut off because the water got too high for safety. The county was fairly close to doing the same thing this time.
For more pictures, follow the link: http://www.guardonline.com/