It’s been a long and hot two days in south Arkansas, cleaning up and restoring power after strong thunderstorms tore through the region Wednesday night.
Places like Cleveland County are in the heart of timber country and it’s usually the people taking down trees, but the vivid lightning, rolling thunder and strong winds took down those trees instead.
“The storm came from yonder there and that tree ended up pointed there,” said Jamie Wagnon, while tracing the path of the storm as it whipped over his chicken farm and tore the roof off a workshop. "It took a piece of wood and spiked it right into that wall there.”
“I feel very fortunate that we didn't have a lot of homes that were damaged,” said county judge Gary Spears. “The worst thing is people having their power out. It’s hot and your power is out, and we’ve got several people who might not see it until Sunday.”
“We had a lot of trees on the line that night and a lot of trees on the road,” said Stephen McClellan, the emergency management coordinator. “There’s damage to some houses and to some barns, and we had to clear the roads so the power companies could get through.”
McClellan has been on loan to Jefferson County to aid his counterparts there while they dealt with historic flooding on the Arkansas River. That came on top of other disaster-level events in his hometown.
“It’s been a pretty rough spring,” he said.
Judge Spears sees a pattern in the spring and he's not sure he likes it.
“It seems like we have more storms more times of the year and it seems like the flooding is a lot worse,” he said.
Wagnon and other chicken farmers praised the utility companies in the area, Entergy Arkansas and C&L Electric Cooperative, for the way power was restored quickly to their operations.
“I couldn’t sleep at all that night,” Wagnon said. “If I heard my generator go off, I would have just a short time, as warm as it is, to get it going for my flock. I’d lose thousands of birds if I don’t have power. It would wipe me out.”