PENDLETON, Ark. — A small Desha County community is anxiously awaiting the Arkansas River’s crest.
Homes, businesses and roads in Pendleton are already inundated with floodwater, and forecasters predict the river will rise several more inches before the crest arrives on Sunday.
Desha County Judge Richard Tindall estimates about two-thirds of the community’s 90 homes have water inside of them. The unincorporated area located about 10 miles outside Dumas is only accessible by boat.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Tindall said. “We’re in a period right now where we can’t do anything. We can go out there and make waves running around, but we couldn’t really accomplish anything. So we’re trying to stay out of there.”
Peggy Hill, a Pendleton business owner, calls the flood “overwhelming.” Water is rising inside Triple P Restaurant & Bar – a riverfront eatery she and her husband have operated since 2012.
“We started preparing about a week ahead of time when we started watching it come from Oklahoma,” she said.
The restaurant remained open until Friday, May 31.
“We operated until the last minute that we could, and the people that had been in that night, they hung around and helped us get everything lifted up, put up,” Hill said.
In the days leading up to that, the Hills had help placing sandbags and building a makeshift wall around the building.
“Tied everything down and bolted it down and then give it to God and let him work his magic. It's all we could do,” Hill said through tears. “But He will prevail. He will get us all out of this.”
In the meantime, she awaits the water’s recession -- and an opportunity to pay forward the kindness shown to her amid the river’s historic rise.
“It won’t be as hard on us as what it will some of the homes and stuff down through here,” she said. “Maybe we can get ours up and going, and then we will be able to fall out and help some of the other families that are back in here behind us, and everybody will work here as a community.”
Judge Tindall says it will take a “huge effort” to restore Pendleton back to normal.
“The minute the water gets down we’ll get everything we can get up here and start trying to clean it up,” he said.
