For storm baby, helping hands

FOUNTAIN LAKE — Rachael Jeans and her father, Jeffrey Jeans, left their Garland County home in the Walnut Valley area as the storm passed Monday night, intending to help a neighbor on Narrow Lane whose tree had crashed through her roof.

As they stopped to talk to a firefighter at a downed tree about getting help for the woman, a man ran toward them with a bundle in his arms, said Rachael Jeans, 15.

“He just yelled, ‘It’s a baby, please help,’” she said.

When the firefighter offered his jacket, the man placed the baby in it and handed him to Jeffrey Jeans. Then Rachael Jeans swaddled him in her own jacket, holding him on her lap to help the child get warm in the heat of their truck.

“He was just wearing this diaper that was soaked through with water,” she said. “He was struggling to breathe, like he was in shock. His eyes were barely open. … There was nothing I could do.”

The baby had a knot on his head from an injury that was starting to bruise, and Jeffrey Jeans ran to seek more help, Rachael Jeans said. A woman who had experience as a nurse turned up, but the teen said there was little she could do for the baby in the dark with no medical supplies.

“We didn’t know where the ambulance was, and we thought we were going to have to try to drive him to the hospital,” she said. “Then someone yelled that the ambulance was coming, and they took him off my lap and ran him to the ambulance.”

Garland County sheriff’s spokesman Judy Daniell confirmed that an 8-month-old infant was in critical condition at Arkansas Children’s Hospital on Tuesday after suffering a head injury during the storm. She said no fatalities had been reported in the county as of midafternoon. The baby’s identity was unknown.

Near Narrow Lane and Arkansas 7, falling trees and flying debris destroyed several homes.

In one yard, all that stood where a mobile home once sat was a front door and a toilet. The home’s injured owner dragged a mattress to a nearby field and planted an American flag in the middle before he was taken to a hospital, neighbors said.

The iron beams of the Teen Challenge of Arkansas rehabilitation center on Arkansas 7 were twisted like a spider’s legs.Two staff members hid during the storm in the ladies room in the building’s basement.

“It sounded like a 747 flying right above our heads,” staff member Cathy Thompson said.

Early Tuesday, Thompson was helping assess damage and salvaging materials lying around the property. Two sides of the center sustained heavy damage, causing the building’s skeleton to show.

Thompson said Tuesday that she also heard the commotion over the injured baby nearby.

“When we came upstairs, I heard a man screaming, ‘The baby is trapped under the house,’” she said, choking back tears. “It was awful. People rushed to help him … firefighters and then there was an ambulance.”

Not far away, the Longsioux family was picking through remnants of children’s clothes, trying to find shoes for the youngest daughter while wrangling five puppies they knew they had to leave behind.

“I was in town, and I saw on the news that the storm was going to be worse than I thought, and I was frantically trying to get home to my four kids cause I knew they wouldn’t know what to do if the storm was really bad,” Jamie Longsioux said.

“There was a fender bender in front me, and then I ran out of gas trying to get here. It was terrifying. I made it to the Shag’s Car Lot and pleaded with the man there to give me a ride.”

When she made it home, Longsioux took her four children ages 7 to 14 to the church next door to seek shelter, grabbing blankets and a few snacks. When the storm cleared, she saw that several trees had flattened her daughters’ room, and another had landed on the roof above the living room.

“It was just destroyed,” she said. “I got the most important things out of the trailer before the storm - you know, my children. We’re all OK.”

In the Sunshine community in western Garland County, the storm left a trail of damage. People worked on covering roof holes with tarps and cutting up trees that had fallen into buildings, yards and roads.

At the Antioch Baptist Church, pastor Bill Carter sat with volunteers who had gathered food, water and other supplies to help those who were taking stock of the damage.

“We were blessed. We had very little damage; the storm just went around the building,” he said.

Carter said his house was also spared from most damage, so he immediately went out to check on other members of the community. He said he found an elderly woman who had been knockedover during the storm and had a broken hip.

“I waited with her in her home for an hour and a half before the ambulance could get through because of all the downed trees,” he said.

Kathi Schirmer and her husband, Phil, said they were lucky in terms of their own home but they had friends in other parts of Sunshine who were not as lucky.

The couple went out late in the night, pulling trees and limbs out of the road as they worked to forge a path for emergency vehicles. They own a Domino’s Pizza chain and said they donated dozens of pizzas to help feed emergency personnel and those making repairs.

“It was what we could do,” she said. “We’re lucky. Everyone is OK, for the most part. We’re going to survive. I think the big worry is just getting ready for the storms they say are coming.”