Night of storms kills 7 in state

LITTLE ROCK — A raging line of storms raced through Arkansas early Friday morning, killing seven people.

Among the victims were three children in different parts of the state who died when trees fell on their homes. Two of the children were crushed to death while riding out the storm nestled in bed with their parents, who also died.

The storm system also killed two women in Oklahoma. The storms left numerous communities in eastern Oklahoma and across Arkansas with damaged roofs and snapped power poles and trees on the roads, which made driving difficult.

As the sun rose Friday, the storms were moving across Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi.

More than 10,000 Arkansas homes were still without power early Friday evening.

Gov. Mike Beebe said Friday in a statement that he was struck by the widespread destruction and loss of life.

“This is the time of year when Arkansans prepare for tornadoes, and we all know what to expect from those, but to see this kind of loss of life and widespread damage without a single reported tornado is not something I remember seeing in my lifetime.”

National Weather Service officials said late Friday that they couldn’t confirm whether any tornadoes touched down during the storm, but teams will continue investigating today.

On Pistol Circle in Garland County, relatives and friends gathered in the yard of the home where Jeff Gibbs, 24, and his daughter, Rylin Gibbs, 18 months, were killed by a tree that crashed into the side of their mobile home while they slept.

A family friend said Rylin had been sick Thursday night, and her father had taken her into his room to comfort her. Rebecca Gibbs, Rylin’s mother, was in another room when the tree fell.

“She ran to the bedroom and was yelling for them,” said Eden Davis, the family friend. “She just kept yelling and trying to find her. She finally saw Rylin’s arm underneath the tree.

“The Fire Department told us they died immediately when the tree crashed. It’s just unbelievable for it to fall into just 3 feet of the house where their bed was.”

Davis said the little girl had been transforming from a baby into a little person with deep-set dimples and was learning to do “big-girl things” every day.

“She was just the sweetest little girl you could ever wish for. And Jeff, he was just a good daddy,” she said. “I mean, he was just trying to hold her and make her feel better because she was sick.”

In Little Rock, a mother and 7-year-old boy were killed in the boy’s bed when a tree crashed through the roof of their home on Cynthia Drive.

Melissa Wedgeworth, 34, and her son, Christopher Higgins, were found pinned beneath the tree about 9:45 a.m., when neighbors surveyed the home’s damage.

When fire crews entered the home, they found Wedgeworth’s 23-month-old daughter, Caelyn, still asleep in her bed in a different room, Little Rock Fire Capt. Randy Hickmon said.

In Bald Knob, 6-year-old Devon Adams died after strong winds caused a tree to fall through the roof of the house he shared with his mother, father and 2-year-old sister, Bald Knob Police Sgt. Stephanie Vaughn said.

The tree, nearly 6 feet in diameter at its base, tore open nearly a third of the house on South Hickory Street, crushing the boy where he slept on a couch against a rear wall, she said.

His mother, Amanda Adams, was in the next room with her daughter when the trunk and large branches burst through the home’s roof about 2:30 a.m., neighbors said.

The mother and daughter were quickly freed by the boy’s father, Floyd Adams, who was awake in another room, they said.

The Adamses’ neighbor, Gaylon Oden, said he heard Floyd Adams call out minutes after winds shook his home.

“I heard him yelling, ‘Gaylon come help me! My boy’s pinned!’” he said.

Oden, Adams and rescue crews couldn’t budge the large tree, he said.

Bald Knob police, firefighters, and workers from the street department and ambulance services were also unable to remove the tree even with excavation equipment on loan from a local businessman, Vaughn said.

About three hours after the tree fell, additional crews from the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management and the Searcy Fire Department finally lifted the tree using air bags, Battalion Chief Eddie Hollis of the Searcy Fire Department said.

After freeing his body, White County Coroner David Powell Jr. pronounced Devon dead at 5:12 a.m., Vaughn said.

“It’s just heartache,” Oden said. “I cannot imagine it being my child.”

A few hours later, family members had disposed of the couch and cut away much of the tree, exposing a gash in the house’s southeast walls, not far from where a child’sred bicycle and Tonka dump truck sat.

In rural Pulaski County, James Loftis, 56, was killed about 3 a.m., when a tree fell and crushed the roof of a camper he was sleeping in behind a house on RiverRoad, south of Scott and west of England.

Pulaski County sheriff’s office spokesman Lt. Carl Minden said fallen trees blocking roadways delayed rescue workers in reaching Loftis. By the time the first deputy arrived just before 4 a.m., he was told by ambulance workers that Loftis was dead.

Loftis’ body couldn’t be removed, however, until about 8:30 a.m., after someone at a nearby farm offered a track hoe to pull off the tree.

In St. Francis County, high winds flipped over a double-wide mobile home in Caldwell, rolling it 100 feet and killing Lardelah Anderson, 65, and injuring her husband, Jessie Anderson, 68.

Jessie Anderson was in serious condition Friday at the Regional Medical Center in Memphis, said Larry Hillis, a detective with the St. Francis County sheriff’s office.

Authorities believe that straight-line winds toppled the home. The National Weather Service in Memphis did not issue a tornado warning for that area during Friday’s storms.

Hillis said the wind blew over the mobile home but didn’t damage a small storage building next to the home.

“It didn’t blow leaves off the trees, either,” he said. “It was the craziest thing I’ve seen.”

POWER, ROADS

Though the storm knocked down trees and power lines in several areas of the state, central Arkansas took the brunt of Friday’s damage.

Entergy Arkansas officials said Little Rock was the hardest-hit city in the state and that by 5:30 a.m., roughly 43,000 of its residents had lost power.

Wind gusts of 60 mph cut through the city shortly before 2 a.m., damaging at least 50 utility poles and toppling nearly 100 trees onto roadways within a few minutes.

Damage was reported throughout the city, but the main path was through the Kenwood and Cammack Village neighborhoods into the Heights area, where yards were ripped up and roadways were blocked from West Markham Street and John Barrow Road all the way northeast of Cantrell Road.

Entergy spokesman James Jones said electricity would be restored by late Friday night to roughly 65 percent of homes and businesses that had lost it. But several thousand Little Rock customers were expected to be without power until tonight, when Jones said he hopes to have electricity back on for 95 percent of affected homes and businesses.

About 40 percent of the North Little Rock Electric Department’s 37,000 customers lost power during the worst of the storm, general manager Mike Russ said.

By midafternoon Friday, workers had reduced the number to less than 1,000, but he said some customers who live in the city’s hilly, hard-toreach areas will not get their power restored until today.

Strong straight-line winds, punctuated by even stronger bursts, knocked down large trees in the Scenic Hill, Park Hill and McCain neighborhoods, Russ said.

“They are extremely difficult to clear, and they tear up everything that they fall on,” he said.

“These areas are inaccessible.” Removing trees and replacing utility poles there will have to be done mostly by hand, “the old-fashioned way,” he said.

Little Rock public works crews began clearing debris from roadways at 4 a.m. Friday, with 22 crews responding to calls in the most affected areas.

Sherman Smith, Pulaski County’s public works director, estimated that at one point 15 percent to 20 percent of the county’s roads were blocked by downed trees or power lines.

Andy Traffanstedt, director of the Pulaski County Office of Emergency Management, said most of the county’s structural damage was in the Scott community.

“There were three homes destroyed. Two received major damage, and there were 10 with minor damage. Two homes were destroyed in Scott and one in Sweet Home.”

Smith said it appeared that the damage was caused by straight-line winds because “everything was laid down in the same direction.”

CLEARING TREES, DEBRIS

Joe Smith, North Little Rock’s director of commerce and governmental affairs, said about 3 p.m. Friday that the city had no blocked streets.

He urged residents clearing debris from their property to place their piles “within 6 feet of the curb but not in the street.” He said he expected minimal, if any, delay in trash collection but noted that the discarded pieces must be shorter than 6 feet long.

“If it’s a tree or limb, you’ll have to cut it up,” he said.

Similar rules apply throughout the county, noted Jordan Johnson, a spokesman for Waste Management, which hauls trash and recycling for some cities in Pulaski County. Johnson said the waste-hauler isn’t anticipating major delays on its routes.

Crews from the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department were dispatched to begin clearing state highways shortly after the storm hit, spokesman Glenn Bolick said.

In addition to fallen trees and signs, the debris included orange construction barrels from the Interstate 630-Interstate 430 interchange project that were scattered across the roadway.

“Anytime we’ve had weather like this, people need to be kind of extra careful when they’re going through construction zones because stuff may have blown out,” Bolick said.

Most main highways and interstates were clear in time for Friday’s morning rush hour, Bolick said.

In rural southeastern Pulaski County, however, fallen trees still blocked Arkansas 161 in several places at midday. As crews worked to move the trees, motorists took makeshift detours through fields on either side of the highway.

Bolick said he didn’t know of any other spots that remained blocked Friday afternoon.

“The first priority is going to be making sure that people can safely get through, and then we’re going to come back through with trucks clearing the debris and getting it off right of way,” Bolick said.

In Little Rock, the Heights neighborhood appeared to have been hit the hardest.

At least 15 homes in the city were damaged by fallen trees, according to the state Department of Emergency Management.

Lack of electricity closed several schools in the state.Four in North Little Rock - North Little Rock-East Campus, Lakewood Middle, Lakewood Elementary and Park Hill Elementary - were closed. In Little Rock, Forest Park Elementary, Jefferson Elementary, Henderson Middle and Hall High were closed.

Also in the Little Rock School District, Brady Elementary and Felder Academy closed at 1:30 p.m. Friday.

The Drew Central School District in Drew County was also without power Friday morning.

POWERFUL STORM

Weather service offices in North Little Rock, Memphis and Shreveport issued 26 tornado warnings Friday morning across the state.

Before the storm system entered Arkansas, a tornado hit Tushka in southeast Oklahoma late Thursday, killing two sisters in their 70s, The Associated Press reported.

That tornado also injured at least 25 people as it ground through the town of 350 residents, Gilbert Wilson, Atoka County’s emergency management director, told the AP. He said witnesses reported seeing two tornadoes that merged to form a single one. The National Weather Service confirmed that a single tornado hit that area.

Tushka Public School Principal Matt Simpson told the AP that the storm destroyed five school buildings and littered the campus with downed trees and bricks.

After ripping through Arkansas, the storm system roared into Mississippi by midmorning Friday.

Three suspected tornadoes left three people critically injured.

The hardest-hit area was Clinton, a city of about 26,000 people just west of Jackson, the AP said.

Late Friday, the storm system also slammed Alabama, killing one and injuring several others. Officials there said tornadoes touched down insix counties.

Details about the fatality and injuries were not immediately available.

Back in Arkansas, Danny Gant, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Memphis, said a survey crew inspected damage in St. Francis County on Friday to determine the wind speed during the storm and whether a tornado touched down there.

Also, teams from the National Weather Service in North Little Rock toured Garland and White counties Friday and are to return there today to further assess the damage.

The storms intensified as they moved across the state, said Chris Buonanno, a National Weather Service meteorologist in North Little Rock. All but the northern tier of the state received heavy winds, hail, rain and lightning, he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Spencer Willems, Andrew Davis, Claudia Lauer, L. Lamor Williams and John Lynch of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; and The Associated Press.