A severe storm the night of Nov. 30 and early Dec. 1 hit parts of Hogscald south of Eureka Springs off Hwy. 23 so hard that some residents are likening it to ice storms of 2000 and 2009.
“Hogscald got hit the strongest in our whole area,” said resident Helga Dietzel. “It hit us around midnight. I went outside after it became quiet and spent two hours with a handsaw because a tree fell on my car and there were branches in my driveway. A lot of us don’t have cell phone reception at home, so we rely on our satellite. But there was no satellite reception because the power was out until noon the next day.”
Dietzel wanted to drive far enough to get cell phone reception to notify Carroll Electric Cooperative Corp. (CECC) that there was a tree on her power line. But every which way she looked, the road was covered with trees.
“There was no way for anyone to even walk, it was so dense,” Dietzel said. “A neighbor up the road has some hogs. They blew away. They are gone. We all have huge damage to the woods around our properties. It reminded me of the ice storm. Some neighbors were not able to get out until other neighbors came by and cleared their drive.”
While the storm didn’t damage her house, days later Dietzel was still in shock.
“Myself, I’m just numb,” she said. “There are areas I haven’t gone to look at yet. One of areas hit the hardest was right here at my place. On December third, a guy with the county road crew worked near my place for hours just to get the creek cleared where it goes under the road. He was back again doing the same work the next day.”
Becky Paul’s property was just outside the zone of damage.
“We got really lucky,” Paul said. “My husband and I were missed. On the other side of the hill, it is death and damnation. Here it is just fine. My son lost about thirteen trees at his house. He has one that got hung up in another tree. It has to come down. We were at home that night and saw the storm on radar. I said, ‘I think it is just going to skirt us,’ and then went to bed. It came a lot closer than I would have liked. There are trees down just absolutely everywhere. I put a video of the damage on Facebook. It seems to be going viral.”
Paul said she feels particularly bad for older residents of the area who might find it difficult to do the work needed to clean up their properties.
“After the ice storm, we were buried in six-and-a-half acres of debris,” Paul said. “I feel bad now because I have friends who lived in the center of the storm track and they’re re-experiencing it. In their yard, it looks just like the ice storm all over again. For older people who lived through the ice storm and then have a repeat, this is a nightmare. They don’t have the strength to move all that wood. I can see how bad it hits the older people especially. A storm like this compounds the heck out of everything. The older people out here are the ones who could use the most help.”
Sherry Meyers was also in the zone of the most destruction.
“It is terrible,” Meyers said. “I think I got the worst of it and the bottom of Helga’s driveway. I had two trees on my roof and trees were thrown on the deck. It was amazing. Yesterday I had six friends who came to help clean it up. It was great to call on people and have them show up and help. It was really hard, hard work. It was tricky and dangerous, but they did it and figured out how to not damage the roof and deck. There were probably thirty-to-forty trees down in my yard and I have a very small yard. Most of them were cedars. Other trees were less affected. Between the lake a mile from me and the road where it joins 108, there were probably thirty trees on the road. Carroll Electric started working at three in the morning getting trees off the lines.”
None of the houses was affected, although some sheds were damaged. Meyers considers that a miracle of sorts and recovery will take a while.
“There were a bunch of trees over in the Clifty area also came down, but not as many as at Hogscald,” Meyers said.
Damage was visible from Hogscald to Fayetteville.
Airport loses two planes and a hangar
There was also major damage at the Carroll County Airport, according to Michael Pfeifer, airport manager.
“We have not had an insurance adjuster yet to see it,” Pfeifer said. “One of the aircrafts was turned upside down in place. It was inverted. It was tied down and the tie downs were torn out of the wings, not the ground. Two airplanes are possibly totaled and one hangar is totaled. One corner of another hangar was torn off and thrown down the valley. The terminal building also suffered some superficial damage to panels on the exterior.”
At 12:30 a.m., the winds blew the airport’s weather station over, so it isn’t known how strong the winds were.
Carroll County Judge Sam Barr said the county road crew worked all day Saturday to remove trees blocking roads. He said there was also some storm damage on the canopy of the courthouse in Berryville.
While no major damage was reported in Eureka Springs, James DeVito said that around midnight the wind was blowing so hard he couldn’t see the parking lot across Main Street.
“The rain was horizontal,” DeVito said. “I’ve never seen it rain down Main Street like that before. I figure it was fifty miles per hour if it was doing anything. The water was pretty much curb-to-curb across Main Street. Tablerock Lake by Kimberling City, that area got hit pretty hard. There must have been a tornado up there. Someone said there was a tornado in Benton County, too. So, it was all around us. It was pretty serious straight-line winds and those F-1 tornadoes were hopping all around. They said straight line winds in Oklahoma were almost eighty miles per hour.”
“We feel fortunate the storm came through when it did, and the higher wind velocities stayed above us as it passed over Eureka Springs,” Public Works Director Dwayne Allen said. “We had a few small trees fall, and there were lots of branches and limbs removed from the roadways. The two inches of rain we received caused minor flooding due to leaves and debris. Shortly after midnight, we lost power at the wastewater plant and the Black Bass pump station. The plant ran on backup power for an hour-and-a half. There was not any pump damage at either facility.”
Mayor Butch Berry said the only major damage he is aware of was at the Lake Leatherwood where the roof of the boat dock was ripped up.
Nancy Plagge, director of corporate communications for CECC, said for accounts served from the Berryville office, the hardest hit areas were just west of Berryville along Hwy. 143; up around Lampe, Mo.; and south of Berryville around Dry Fork. There were 27 broken poles and 5,622 accounts affected from the Berryville district.
“The Clifty area south of Eureka Springs was hit hard,” Plagge said. “This area is served by our Huntsville office. The total poles and customers affected from the Huntsville district were 14 broken poles and 2,295 consumers affected. System-wide, there were 67 broken poles and 15,518 consumers out of power. All power was restored by late Saturday night, and many areas sooner than that.”