LANGLEY — While relatives and friends of missing campers prayed that the floodwaters at a southwest Arkansas campground Friday hadn’t taken their loved ones, families of 16 others found dead were already grieving.
Many relatives of the missing held a nervous vigil Friday at the Pilgrim’s Rest Missionary Baptist Church in Lodi, about 13 miles from the Albert Pike Recreation Area at the southern edge of the Ouachita National Forest.
At nightfall, as many as 20 people hadn’t been found.
Among the dead were at least three children, said Arkansas State Police Lt. Glenn Sligh, whose team of special agents was in charge of identifying bodies and notifying families.
Later, he said that he’d lost count.
About 100 people were at the Albert Pike campgrounds, but officials had few specifics because all the registration information had washed away in the flood, said C.J. Norvell, a spokesman for Ouachita National Forest. The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management set up an information phone line - (888) 683-2336 - for anyone needing to report or obtain information about missing loved ones.
Late Friday night only one of the dead had been publicly identified. Spring Hill School Superintendent Dickie Williams said geometry teacher Deb McMaster died.
Bodies still unidentified lay in body bags along the bank of the Little Missouri River until they could be moved to a temporary morgue in Mena. Polk County Coroner Richard Myhand said photos of the dead were shown to families to identify.
Janice McRae, 56, who has lived most of her life in a home on private property that’s within the national forest, rushed out of her home Friday morning, hoping to help rescue campers.
“I didn’t rescue anybody,” she said somberly. “I found bodies.”
When she reached the water’s edge, McRae found the body of a 2-year-old girl.
She wrapped the girl’s body in a quilt, ministered to the child’s mother and waited for authorities to arrive.
She also saw the bodies of a man and woman wrapped around a tree, like they had been “slammed into it,” McRae said. Another body - of a man, woman or child, she didn’t know which - floated by.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get this out of my head,” she said.
McRae remembers devastating flooding along the same river in May 1968.
“What’s different is in May there were no campers,” she said. “Last night, camping was full. There were church groups and little children.”
Randall Wade, 16, was among those camping at the recreation area.
He and a group of relatives were awakened just before 3 a.m. by rushing water that had spilled over the riverbanks.
They stepped out of their motor home together, hoping to walk to safety, but fast moving water immediately separated them.
Wade, a high school student from Ashdown, clung to a tree as his sister, brother-inlaw, young nephew, mother and his mother’s boyfriend floated away in different directions.
“We all just broke up,” said Wade, who had bandages on his forearms to cover scrapes he got from clinging to the tree. “We were flying through the woods.”
Wade climbed higher and higher up a tree, trying to keep his head above water. Eventually, he walked out of the woods to a nearby store, wearing just a T-shirt and sneakers.
The water had ripped off his pants - and left him all alone.
By nightfall, an untold number of others had walked out of the woods or been rescued, and at least eight people had been treated at area hospitals. The Arkansas State Police confirmed that at least 16 people had died during the predawn flood.
State police and the other law enforcement agencies called off the search for survivors at dark Friday but planned to resume at sunrise.
Though they still have to contend with the rugged, craggy terrain, rescuers will not have to wade through floodwaters. Much of the water had receded by Friday afternoon, but it was still unclear how long the search-and-rescue effort would take.
The search from the air and the banks of the murky river was hampered at times by poor communications, the rough terrain, mudslides and debris that rendered bridges and some roads impassable.
Because of the area’s spotty cell-phone service, stranded campers and families of the missing had difficulty making calls. Verizon is providing two portable cell-phone towers to help improve reception, said Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe.
Beebe stopped at a church in Lodi where many were waiting, hoping to offer comfort.
The governor tried to reassure Adam Jez, 26, who is related to Wade.
“Nobody’s going to quit,” Beebe told him.
A BLESSED CRASH
Darkness had concealed the rising water lapping the riverbank.
People at the campground had gone to sleep Thursday to a steady but moderate rain that began about 9:30 p.m.
Rain fell across much of the state Thursday night, and Montgomery and Pike counties were the heaviest hit, said Tabitha Clarke, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock.
The downpour caused the Little Missouri River to begin rising about 1 a.m., Clarke said.
In less than an hour, the National Weather Service issued a flash-flood warning that covered a 45-mile stretch from Polk County along the Oklahoma-Arkansas border east to Garland County.
Water cascaded down through the rugged hills of the Ouachita National Forest, off the 1,690-foot-tall Cub Mountain to the north of the campsite and off the Brier and Leader mountains, both 1,915 feet tall, to the northwest.
Within four hours, the Little Missouri rose 20 feet.
Tracy Farley, a spokesman for the Ouachita National Forest, said that by Friday evening she had not learned whether the Albert Pike location had a warning system to alert campers to bad weather.
However, she confirmed that most of the federal campsites are “remote” and have no warning systems.
Bill Paxton, 53, awoke around 2 a.m. to the rain. He and his wife, who was at work in Hot Springs, have lived since March in a cabin built on pilings near the river.
He put on a pot of coffee and waited to see how bad the weather would get.
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By 2:30 a.m., he said, the river was rising dangerously fast. Shortly thereafter, he saw an RV floating by.
“There were people in it,” he said.
The family’s RV crashed into Paxton’s cabin, a blessing for them, he said. The man inside the RV managed to hoist up his granddaughter, then his wife, then his dog, getting them inside the cabin before climbing to safety himself.
Water poured through the cabin’s windows, getting waist high at one point, Paxton said. They thought they would have to climb onto the roof, but the water began receding.
The National Weather Service got its first report of flash flooding at the recreation area at 3:05 a.m. Within seven minutes, at least six people had been reported dead.
“A search is underway at this time for additional campers ... but it is unknown at this time how many other people might be missing,” a 3:13 a.m. time-stamped storm report on the weather service’s website reads.
The Albert Pike Recreation Area is six miles from the small Pike County community of Langley, where Arkansas 84 and Arkansas 369 meet. The town is sometimes a stopping point for campers heading to the recreation area in the Ouachita National Forest.
There are 54 official campsites and many other areas where visitors can pitch tents for the night. Locals said people were camping in tents Thursday night, but they had no idea what happened to them.
President Barack Obama said Friday that he would pray for those who still await news of their loved ones.
“Michelle and I would like to extend heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives during this horrible flash flood, and we offer our prayers for those who anxiously await news of loved ones still missing,” Obama said in a news release.
He said he had instructed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help Arkansas address any unmet needs.
Beebe also offered “whatever help we can” to the families.
“I’ve seen flooding before,” Beebe said, “but I’ve never seen water do this kind of damage.”
NOTHING LIKE IT
Nick Hofert, 32, of Texarkana was vacationing in a cabin in the forest. During the flooding, he rounded up 20 to 30 people from the nearbyRV park and sheltered them in his cabin.
“I ain’t never seen anything like that before,” Hofert said.
The campsite and many of the cabins - even ones on pilings - were destroyed.
Trees obscured much of the aerial view near the campsite, but easily visible were vehicles strewn among the woods. A full-size red pickup lay on its side at the base of one tree. Other cars and a minivan had been scattered around like loose litter.
An orange life jacket floated among trees and other debris near the mouth of the Little Missouri River where it pours into Lake Greeson.
Debris was so thick at the mouth of the river that it looked like a solid mass.
Law enforcement officers and rescue workers lined bridges along the river, scanning the water for survivors or bodies.
State police Special Agent Scott Clark had been to the search area and told people that their loved ones had died.
“You cannot imagine the devastation,” Clark said, describing a vast area where the only items left in place were “concreted deep into the ground.”
“If there are remaining [surviving] victims,” he said, “they could be almost anywhere.” Information for this article was contributed by Kenneth Heard, Debra Hale-Shelton, Jamie Klein, Dave Hughes, Cathy Frye and L. Lamor Williams of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/12/2010