Arkansas Army National Guard Responds after Disastrous Flooding
“I can tell you this – without the National Guard, I don’t know what we would have done,” said Pocahontas, Arkansas, Mayor Kary Story.
Mayor Story was referring to the deployment of dozens of Army National Guard Soldiers to the Northeast Arkansas town of Pocahontas. With a population of just under 7,000, Pocahontas’ levy overflowed last spring, causing major flooding in the small town.
Record flood levels in the Black River, which passes through Pocahontas, led to the levy overflow and ultimately the flooding. This was all undoubtedly due to heavy storms that pummeled the State, including the Delta region where Pocahontas is located, in late April and early May of 2017.
According to Melody Daniel, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, 50 hours of downpour dropped about 5 inches of rain on all of Arkansas, with isolated instances of 6 or 7 inches at some locations. While to some, that may not seem like enough rain to cause major damage, imagine an area where the main economy is agriculture and it is not hard to see how 5 to 7 inches of rain drowning miles and miles of growing crops could be catastrophic.
According to the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, rain and flooding May 8–12, 2017, caused approximately $175 million in losses to crops, affecting about 360,000 acres of farmland.
According to Daniel, flood-related accidents also caused 10 deaths in the State, and almost $20 million in infrastructure and personal property damage was recorded with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In addition, 23 counties in Arkansas were declared disaster areas by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Pocahontas and the rest of Randolph County were particularly hard-hit because of a unique topographical trait.
“Randolph County is the only county in the state of Arkansas that has five different rivers that flow into it,” Daniel said. “It’s not just the Black River that is the problem. It’s the Black River, Current River, Eleven Point River, Fourche River and Spring River.”
