Last in a series
ALBERT PIKE RECREATION AREA — Reuben and Kathryn Cleveland strained to keep their heads above water as the Little Missouri River gushed into their 1985 Toyota motor home parked at the federal campground.
“Lord, if it be thy will and we have to go, let us go together,” Kathryn, 78, prayed aloud. “But please, spare the children.”
That’s all Kathryn could think about as the water rose — all those children she had seen playing in the campground hours earlier.
We’ve lived our lives, she thought. But those babies ...
The Clevelands were volunteer hosts at the campground’s Loop D. No one had warned them of the flash-flood watches and warning issued for the area June 10-11. They had no idea the Little Missouri was flooding at a level that hadn’t been seen in more than 500 years.
Kathryn had barely managed to make a 911 call before the motor home began to float.
“I’m hanging up!” she’d shouted at the dispatcher, who wanted her to stay on the line.
The river tugged at the Clevelands’ bobbing RV. Wedged against an iron-gate pole, it remained providentially moored to its campsite by a water hose.
A devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Kathryn recited passages from the Book of Mormon and sent fervent prayers up to God as the water grew deeper.
This, she thought, is what it’s like to look death in the face.
A SURREAL SIGHT
Dispatchers had radioed search-and-rescue teams about 3:30 a.m., after receiving at least two 911 calls from the Albert Pike campground.
Two people were standing on top of a camper with flashlights.
Veteran firefighter Roger York figured a couple had hooked up their RV, tried to cross a low-water bridge and got swept off.
That sort of thing had happened before. Usually rescuers made it to the campgrounds quickly, and no one got hurt.
This call had sounded no different.
Roger, assistant chief for the Langley Volunteer Fire Department, sprang from his bed and hit the road within a matter of minutes.
When he reached Little Blocker Creek on Arkansas 84, Roger discovered 4 feet of water covering the road.
He could not cross.
Neither could U.S. Forest Service Patrol Capt. Jimmy Hicks and a handful of other rescuers from Montgomery and Pike counties.
Pounding, relentless rain had kept Jimmy to only 35 or 40 miles an hour as he headed from his home in Glenwood toward the campgrounds. As he approached Little Blocker Creek, Jimmy had tried to navigate his Ford Expedition through the water, but the nose of the large SUV veered slightly, making him worry that it would start floating.
So he backed up and waited. More than 30 minutes passed before the water receded enough for rescuers to continue on.
Roger met two more firefighters at the Langley Fire Department, just 6 miles from the Albert Pike Recreation Area.
Jimmy drove ahead.
A caravan of vehicles snaked along Arkansas 369, weaving around fallen trees and boulders.
Ditches along either side of the road had turned into fast-moving channels of water. The rescuers made it around two mudslides by scraping their vehicles along the road’s left guardrail.
Topping the hill closest to the campground, Jimmy spotted a third mudslide — and a tree — across the road. He put his Ford in four-wheel drive and tried to press on. But the tree became lodged under his door.
Once again, rescuers found themselves blocked.
Jimmy grabbed an ax from the back of his vehicle and chopped away at the wood, creating an opening just wide enough for the caravan to pass through.
At 5:34 a.m., Jimmy made it to Loop D, the campground that had suffered the brunt of the Little Missouri’s surging waters. Roger wasn’t far behind him.
Glittering specks of light dotted the area.
Fireflies, Roger thought, bemused by the unexpected sight.
But as the caravan drew closer, he realized that the pretty sparkles came from flashlights dropped by fleeing campers when the water overtook them.
Screams echoed from the surrounding treetops.
A bleeding, barefoot man ran by.
“Debbie!” he yelled, preparing to leap into the fast-moving water separating him from several survivors stranded on a flood-created island.
“Debbie!”
A firefighter grabbed him and pulled him away from the water.
Meanwhile, Reuben and Kathryn Cleveland pried open the door of their motor home. Dazed and injured campers wandered aimlessly.
Reuben took a moment to thank God. Then he approached Jimmy. He wanted to help.
The small group of rescuers was shaken by what they saw.
Surrounded by panicked survivors, debris and floodwaters, only then did they realized the magnitude of what had happened.
A SOBERING THOUGHT
Downstream, at the privately owned Lowery’s Camp Albert Pike RV Park and Cabins, Kerri Basinger clung to a partially submerged utility pole, her lifeline after being washed away from the federal campground.
A new channel of the Little Missouri surged between the frightened woman and a group of people standing on the ridge above. They urged her to hang on just a little longer.
One of the onlookers, state police Sgt. Brady Gore, discreetly pulled his wife, Gina, aside.
He wanted to know if she’d driven through the federal campground the day before.
“Yes,” Gina replied.
“How many people were over there?”
“A lot,” Gina said, puzzled by her husband’s sudden interest.
“Like how many?” Brady pressed.
“It was full.”
Brady fell silent.
Gina didn’t get it. Like everyone else, she was focused on Kerri’s plight. And Kerri, she figured, must have been sleeping in a cabin near the utility pole.
The federal campground had only briefly crossed Gina’s mind, and her worst imaginings involved wet and cold campers sitting on a mountainside, waiting impatiently for the water to go down.
Then she bumped into elderly Loretta Wiley whose cabin had been nearly submerged.
“I wish the sun would come up,” Gina told her neighbor.
Loretta shook her head. “Oh, honey,” she sighed. “When that sun comes up, it’s going to be a whole lot worse.”
LETTING GO
Umpire-Athens volunteer firefighter Cohen Davis was among the first group of rescuers to arrive at Lowery’s.
He took one long look at Kerri’s precarious hold on that pole and put on a life jacket. He grabbed a second one for Kerri.
“You ain’t going in,” one of the onlookers told the 26-year-old firefighter. “You’re crazy.”
“I’m going in,” Cohen declared.
Cohen didn’t know what kind of injuries Kerri had suffered. If she passed out or let go of the pole, she was a dead woman. She would be no match for the current.
Cohen tied himself to utility lines strung between two sweetgum trees. Then, hand-over-hand, above the water, he worked his way toward Kerri. When he reached her, she broke down.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“My arm’s broken,” she sobbed.
Cohen could see Kerri’s arm had a bad gash, but it wasn’t broken.
“Where were you camped at?” he asked.
“Loop D,” Kerri told him.
Cohen was shocked.
Her campsite was nearly a mile away.
“Where’s my two little girls and husband?” Kerri asked.
“I don’t know,” Cohen said, tying a rope around her.
Despite the rope and life jacket, Kerri refused to let go of the pole.
“I can’t go across this,” she whimpered.
“You have to trust us,” he urged.
At that moment, in the distance, a man called for her.
“Kerri,” she heard the voice say.
“That’s my name,” she told Cohen.
There’s someone else left, she thought.
“Kerri. We’re OK!” the voice called again.
With renewed hope, Kerri let go, allowing Cohen and the current to take her toward higher ground.
Rescuers rushed her to the hospital, where doctors determined that in addition to the deep gash, Kerri had suffered broken ribs and a concussion.
While there, Kerri learned that her husband and daughters were dead. Her stepson, Kyler, had survived.
In the days and weeks after the flood, Kerri would tell herself she must have imagined the voice calling her name.
Months later, she would ask Cohen about that moment.
He had heard the voice too.
...
As the water went down, Candace Smith, Kerri’s best friend, gradually slid down the tree she’d managed to grab when the river swept her away.
Like Kerri, Candace had become separated from her husband, Anthony, and their two young children, Joey, 5, and Katelynn, almost 3.
For the longest time, she could hear only the rush of water. But as the roar faded and the sun began its rise, she heard voices.
They belonged to her stepson, Austin, 13; Kerri’s stepson, Kyler, 14; and the boys’ friend Brady Pate, 15.
Candace called out. Then she and the teenagers stood there, in the woods, waiting for the helicopters. That’s what would happen in the movies, Candace thought. Surely they would hear them any minute now, or see them, plucking other survivors from the treetops.
But there was only silence.
Overwhelmed, Candace collapsed.
The three teenagers wandered away, with Kyler and Austin calling out for their dads.
“Do not leave!” Candace shrieked. “Come back!”
When the boys returned, they brought a survivor with them.
The boys left again. Came back with two more survivors.
Despite Candace’s protests, they continued to search for their missing family members.
It was Austin who broke the news to Candace.
“I found Joey,” he said.
“Where?” she cried.
Austin simply shook his head.
“I know, baby,” Candace said. “I know. Just take me to him.”
Austin began walking. He stopped, then pointed toward the ground with his thumb.
There’s my Joe Joe.
The little boy lay utterly still, this sprightly towhead who had once gleefully painted himself banana-yellow after getting into Candace’s craft supplies.
Katelynn’s body would be found later. The river had claimed her too.
For nearly an hour, Candace sat with Joey, disbelieving.
She heard shouts. On the other side of the water separating Candace from the rest of the campground, a group of rescuers waved and hollered. They wanted to come and get her.
“I’m not leaving my baby here!” Candace yelled.
“Ma’am, we gotta get you out!” one of the men replied.
“I’m not leaving him.”
A rescuer crossed over the rushing water by rope.
He pleaded with Candace to put on the life jacket. Still, she balked.
“I promise you, I will get your baby,” he said. “But we’ve got to get you out of here.”
As the volunteer firefighter helped pull her across the river, he made a confession: “I just signed up to shoot a water hose. I never knew I’d have to do anything like this.”
'I KNEW IT'
National Weather Service forecaster John Lewis had spent the night tracking the storm system that caused flash flooding at Albert Pike.
In the days before, the system had triggered flooding along the Guadalupe and Comal rivers in central Texas, killing one tourist.
Realizing this scenario could unfold in Arkansas, Lewis’ colleagues had issued two flash-flood watches on June 10.
But Forest Service employees never relayed news of the watches to the camp hosts or campers at Albert Pike. And the closest tower that would have carried the information to weather radios had fallen down nearly two years before.
Though the flood threat increased throughout the night, no one from the Forest Service had monitored the storm. So when Lewis issued a flash-flood warning for portions of Montgomery and three other counties just before 2 a.m., it went unheeded.
Over the next two hours, Lewis had called sheriff’s offices in those areas, including Montgomery County. Dispatchers there assured him they were aware of — and responding to — flooding at Albert Pike.
The Montgomery County dispatcher hadn’t seemed alarmed.
Neither he nor Lewis had any idea Loop D and large portions of Lowery’s now sat underwater and that campers were fighting for their lives.
Another forecaster working with Lewis had made one last call to the Montgomery County sheriff’s office about 4:45 a.m.
The dispatcher described the same situation as before: flash flooding and some high-water rescues.
Not wanting to interfere, the forecasters didn’t call again. When the sun rose at 6:04 a.m., Lewis was nearing the end of his shift.
He drove home to watch a little television so he could unwind before going to bed. Between bites of cereal, he flipped through the stations.
Lewis stopped on Channel 4 just long enough to see the breaking-news alert about an unfolding tragedy. As soon as the news anchor said “Albert Pike,” Lewis’ heart sank.
He picked up the phone and called his boss, John Robinson.
“I knew it. I knew this was going to happen,” he told Robinson.
Lewis felt like nothing he’d done in the hours before dawn had made a difference. To a man in the business of saving lives, that was a devastating thought.
Months after the flood, he’d say “I would have liked to be the guy to drive down there with a bullhorn and wake those people up.”
Co-workers and family reassured Lewis, telling him he had done everything he could to warn the campers.
But that morning, he couldn’t be consoled.
And for the first time in his career, he cried.
...
For the next several hours, Candace and Austin sat on a bench outside the Lowery’s store, waiting.
Surely Anthony, a rugged outdoorsman, had survived. Any minute, he’d saunter out of those woods.
Time crept.
Austin thought he heard his dad calling for him.
“No, baby, I didn’t hear that,” Candace said.
The truth slid through her mind, unbidden.
He’s not coming back.
“This is it,” she finally said aloud. “This is all we have.”
“No,” her stepson protested. “Dad’s coming.”
“Austin, look at me,” Candace ordered.
She struggled for composure, for the right words.
“It’s just us.”
...
Since the flood, Candace and Kerri have returned to Albert Pike many times.
In years past, when the two mothers walked these woods, they were followed by their rough-and-tumble brood.
Now it’s the butterflies that tag at their heels.
The first time Candace and Kerri were able to laugh over memories of their children, one of the delicate insects danced above them.
When they sat at a picnic table on a brisk November day, crying and aching over the loss of their little ones, yellow butterflies swirled around them.
And once, as the two friends stood before a makeshift memorial to their families, an orange-and-black butterfly landed on Kerri.
After a brief rest, it flitted to the wooden plaque and settled on the word “family.”
The butterfly next skimmed a cluster of flowers before alighting on Candace.
When it returned to the plaque, it once again landed on “family.”
For Candace and Kerri, that precision conveyed a simple message:
We’re still with you.
EPILOGUE
Twenty people died in the flood.
Eight were children.
All but three of the victims came from Loop D.
Like Kerri, Candace lost her husband and two youngest children. Both of their stepsons survived.
“It’s a comfort knowing our babies are with their daddies, that they’re not alone,” Kerri says.
To this day, she and Candace struggle to understand why they were left behind. Their husbands were so much stronger than they were. Why didn’t the men make it?
The two friends finally concluded that Shane and Anthony expended all of their energy helping others.
And now Kerri and Candace feel they must do the same.
They believe it’s their responsibility to make sure Albert Pike, a beloved campground for generations of families, is made safe.
“We don’t want Albert Pike to close forever,” Candace says. “We want it to be opened for thousands of people to enjoy like our families did. We want what should have been done, done now.”
After the flood, neither woman could imagine returning to the homes they once shared with their families.
So they are each staying with relatives until the house they plan to share is completed.
Janice, the owner of Lowery’s, has closed her RV park for good. She says she would never sleep well again knowing people were camping there. She has commissioned a memorial for those who lost their lives.
The U.S. Forest Service hasn’t decided whether Albert Pike will ever reopen to campers.