Day 2: Hunt ... wait ... hope

Flooding toll rises; searchers scour area

Boaters with the Arkansas Canoe Club are briefed Saturday morning before heading out to look for flood victims.
Boaters with the Arkansas Canoe Club are briefed Saturday morning before heading out to look for flood victims.

— Families and friends of the two dozen people still missing since the flood at a popular campground early Friday braced themselves Saturday for grim news as another day passed without seeing their loved ones.

Rescuers say the search of the rugged terrain in that mountainous region of southwest Arkansas will take days.

Federal authorities toured the damage Saturday at the Albert Pike Recreation Area near Langley, as stunned families of the missing campers waited helplessly for news. For a second day, many gathered inside the Pilgrim’s Rest Missionary Baptist Church in nearby Lodi for prayers and solitude.

Others, with grief and exhaustion etching their faces, waited under a shade tree across the street from the church.

“A lot of them are physically exhausted and emotionally spent,” said Brigette Williams, a spokesman for the Arkansas chapter of the American Red Cross, which is helping the families.

Some relatives, like Amanda Willis, know that their loved ones are among the at least 18 confirmed dead.

Willis; her husband, Clark; their 6-year-old daughter, Kylee Sullivan; and Kylee’s best friend Gayble Moss, 7, had gone camping with Amanda Willis’ parents, Gerald and Julie Freeman.

Gayble “was so excited about Albert Pike,” Willis said. “She had never gone to camp before.”

Friday’s rush of water killed Kylee, Gayble and five other children. Amanda Willis’ mother also died.

On Saturday, the families of the missing remained hopeful that the 200 people combing both sides of the Little Missouri River from north of the remote Albert Pike Recreation Area south to Lake Greeson would find survivors.

A Camper shares emotional tale of survival.

Arkansas Flood Survival Story

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“This search could continue for a while,” Gov. Mike Beebe said Saturday afternoon. “I think something like a 25-mile area of the Little Missouri and/or tributaries and/or the lake are potential areas that have to be searched.”

Searchers in canoes and kayaks, on horseback and all-terrain vehicles and on foot, spread out over steep, brushy and rugged terrain.They covered some new ground and went back over some areas that had already been searched, looking under debris piles and in places they might have overlooked the first time.

They battled summer heat, insects and the terrain, said John Strom, a U.S. Forest Service safety officer. “It’s very hazardous.”

Information about how many - if any - people had been found alive Saturday was unavailable.

‘KNOCKING ON DOORS’

Heavy rain hit the area Thursday night, triggering flash flooding of the Little Missouri River. National Weather Service officials described the flood as a rapidly rising, swift current that went on for hours, rather than as a tsunami like wall of water.

“It may have been rising five feet an hour,” said Marty Trexler, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock. “The problem was with the fast current.”

The water sent debris and people downriver, miles from the campsite.

Secretary of Agriculture and Arkansas congressmen tour disaster area

Congressional Tour

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“The sheer power of that water was such that 4- to 5-inch slabs of asphalt had been completely ripped up off the parking lot and driven into other portions of the asphalt much like you hear stories about wood being driven through trees in a major tornado,” Beebe said.

Many campers and people who lived near the park were sleeping when the water began to rise. Though the weather service issued a flash-flood warning for the area at 1:57 a.m., there was no formal warning system in place to alert anyone.

State police Sgt. Brady Gore had decided at the last minute Thursday to spend the night at his family’s cabin, which is set three rows back from the riverbank atop a small hill.

He and his wife, Gina, were awakened by campers Matt Whatley and J.D. Quinn, who pounded on the cabin’s back door about 3:15 a.m.

Map

“We were lucky,” Gore said. “Another few minutes, it would have broken over that hill and flooded our row of cabins.”

Whatley and Quinn said they were awake when the river started to spill over its banks.

“We were just up drinking,” said Quinn, 24, of Garland, Texas.

They noticed that the water was rising “pretty fast” and decided to go move their vehicles.

“By the time that happened, the water had already parted and had the whole house surrounded,” Quinn said. “So I grabbed my truck, grabbed the three people with us and got the truck out. ... Once we reached the high ground, I hit OnStar and told the girls to get whoever they could on their way.”

Whatley and Quinn then put on their tennis shoes and “went right back and started knocking on doors,” Quinn said. “It was 3:30 in the morning. People were sleeping.”

C.J. Norvell, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, said the initial responders to the disaster were close to the campground by 3:30 a.m.

But the road into it was blocked by a landslide. Campers couldn’t get out, and the rescuers couldn’t get in, Norvell said.

The first response “was very quick, but getting to the people ... was very difficult. It wasn’t until around 5 a.m. that they could get into the area where most of the people were.”

Quinn said he and Whatley knocked on the doors of about 10 cabins and got eight or 12 people out. He said he waded in water up to his neck.

The noise of the flood was deafening, he said.

“I couldn’t hear anything. Just lumber and houses being destroyed.”

‘HOWEVER LONG IT TAKES’

Authorities aren’t sure how many people were camping in or around the federal campground when the flood hit because all the registration information was washed away, Norvell said.

Official estimates have ranged between 100 and 300 people. As of Saturday, 23 people remained unaccounted for, said state police Capt. Mike Fletcher.

Authorities are not sure whether the 23 were swept away or whether they left the camping area before the flood. To speed up that determination, Fletcher said, authorities may release their names publicly.

Norvell said the list of missing people was compiled by law enforcement officials using a variety of sources, including reports from family members who knew or suspected that loved ones were at the park, and information found in vehicles at the campground.

Strom said searchers continue to hold out hope that survivors will be found. Thus far, authorities have vowed to continue searching until everyone is accounted for.

“However long it takes,” Fletcher said.

The work, including finding and identifying the bodies of children, is taking an emotional toll on the people searching for survivors.

“There’s been a lot of stress from the recovery efforts,” Strom said.

The deaths and destruction serve as a reminder of what’s important, said Doug Beeman, 36, of Atlanta, Texas.

He was camping in a tent about five miles upstream from the recreation area with his 16-year-old son, Trent.

Awakened by water in their tent, the father and son grabbed their bags of clean clothes and fled, zipping the tent behind them. Within minutes, water swept the tent away.

They got into Beeman’s truck, said a prayer and waited out the storm.

Once they were able, the Beemans drove into the main campground, where they saw the coroner’s van.

“It kind of put some things in perspective,” Beeman said. “We can look backand say, ‘Yeah, we lost some of our stuff.’ You know, that’s all material stuff, that’s stuff that don’t matter, that don’tamount to a hill of beans in the end.”

TOURING THE DAMAGE

Elected and federal officials who visited the disaster area Saturday praised the men and women diligently searching in the heat for victims.

“This is one of the most devastating and hardest tragedies our state has been through in a long, long time,” U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor said. “The one encouraging thing is seeing how neighbor is helping neighbor, seeing how people from all across the state have converged on the area to do search and rescue, to bring comfort to the families.”

Pryor, along with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack,U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln and U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, visited the southwest Arkansas site and met with families of the missing.

All pledged to concentrate federal personnel and equipment to aid in the search. Vilsack’s agency oversees the U.S. Forest Service, which operates the campground.

“We ask all of America to lift up their prayers,” Lincoln said.

Ross said he was stunned by the extent of the damage.

“In my district, we’re used to tornadoes,” he said. “We’re not used to something like this.”

Among the damage they saw was a tractor-trailer rig tipped almost on its side, its engine hood ripped off, its dump trailer twisted around a stand of trees; a white minivan, propped up against a tree, its rear end in the air, its windshield smashed; and a once shiny, black late-model pickup resting at a grotesque angle against a tree with sheets of asphalt ripped from the ground pressing against it.

Nearby, two recreational vehicles appeared to be attached together in a stand of trees and brush. Yet, a shelf of linen in a rear storage compartment, exposed to the elements, appeared to be undisturbed.

Just south of the recreation area, camper trailers and cars were submerged in water at a private park called Camp Albert Pike.

“The park is destroyed,” Camp Albert Pike manager Jesse Lowery said. “But we had no injuries. Water picked up all the vehicles and moved them. It looked like it pushed them all to the back of the camp.”

Though people staying at Lowery’s park were spared, he said, he lost friends - Shane Basinger, 34, and Anthony Smith, 30, both of Gloster, La. - when the Little Missouri River flooded.

“I can’t deal with it,” he said. “It’s just too hard.” Information for this article was contributed by Sean Beherec, Kenneth Heard and Jamie Klein of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/13/2010

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