Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.

Hello again, everyone, and thanks very much for being with us.

Lives were lost ten directly or indirectly at last count.

That is, of course, always a fluid number.

Property losses well into the millions.

Almost certainly eight, perhaps eventually nine figures.

The total economic impact at this juncture plainly beyond calculation.

We are speaking, of course, of the tornadoes that roared across Texas and Oklahoma before entering northwest Arkansas last weekend, claiming lives, homes, businesses and dreams.

What happened and what happens now is the focus of our edition.

And joining us in our first segment tonight, Mayor Greg Hines of Rogers, the Arkansas city that took the hardest blow, perhaps age.

Gary is director of the State Department of Emergency Management and Chris Bonano is science and operations officer of the National Weather Service in Arkansas.

Gentlemen, thanks all of you for for being with us.

Chris, I want to begin with you.

Give us the sign.

What happened?

I mean, exactly what were the dynamics of this terrible system?

Yes, All the ingredients of producing severe weather and specifically tornadoes actually came together that night with the distribution of instability, the fuel that causes under storms, the nature of the change of winds in the vertical, in the atmosphere, all that came together to produce these dangerous storms and dangerous impacts and so forth.

There was one thunderstorm that was particularly caused a lot of damage, and most of the tornadoes had actually started in Oklahoma, moved across into northwest Arkansas and then left the state, say, about 12 or about 12 or so or excuse me, 6 a.m. and so forth.

So long lived supercell over those dangerous storms produced the most, most tornadoes and so forth.

And we saw that tonight night.

Yeah.

Was there anything unique in retrospect?

Not anything unique about this system, meteorologically speaking, scientifically speaking in this case.

All the places I've worked in all the years have worked and so forth.

I did know that these particular tornadoes of are quite wide.

I don't remember too many cases where we had so many of thousand yards or wider, so forth that was unique.

That's something part of my job and part of the weather service.

What we'll do is go back and look at the data, look at the damage and see where we can learn what we learn.

So we can do our best to protect the folks there in Arkansas when by the time this thing hit.

Roger, by the time it moved into Arkansas, northwest Arkansas, what were what kind of monster are we looking at and what were the meteorological forces?

Yeah, meteorological again, quite even although it was late at night, the instability was quite high.

The wind shear was quite favorable for tornadoes and so forth.

Another thing we noted that these storms are really quite quickly, say 50 to 60 miles an hour.

And there is a correlation between the speed of the storms and the damage it produces.

And we saw that that that.

Yeah, this was a storm.

Yes.

Yeah.

All right, A.J., Gary, where do we stand now?

It wasn't just oh, we're going to join the mayor of Rogers here in a second, but the damage was pretty widespread in northwest Arkansas.

That's correct.

We have numerous counties that were damaged up through the northern northwest, north central part of the state.

So where we're at now, we immediately started doing some damage assessment starting in the Benton County area.

Actually, the day I believe was on Tuesday, we had my team, along with some FEMA representatives in the air flying that the damaged area.

So we were able to quickly get enough data to justify requesting a major declaration.

Governor Sanders submitted that letter yesterday and we submitted it with three counties, Benton, Boone and Marion counties only.

And the reason we did those counties is because those were the first ones that we got the assessments done.

Our numbers showed that we were well above what's needed for a request for a presidential declaration.

We wanted to move fast on that.

So Governor Sanders submitted that declaration request yesterday and I expect to hear or something back sometime today as we do additional assessments in those other counties that we know were impacted, some of them seriously impacted back to where in Baxter County today with FEMA doing assessments.

And as we finish those up, and if we get to the federal declaration, we will add additional counties to that declaration.

So, again, we went we went ahead with the three that we had because we felt we had plenty enough numbers and justification for that major presidential declaration.

Over to Mayor Hines.

If we can't, Gary Hines and Rogers, this was.

Well, obviously, you're the chief executive officer of of a fair sized city there.

But it was also very personal to you, the storm.

Yeah, no question.

You know, my wife and I, we live in the downtown historic district of Rogers.

And it was it was one of the areas hardest hit, not not as hardest hit as far as loss of complete homes, but because you're in that district that, you know, all of the 102, close to 200 year old trees in the city reside in the core of the downtown, most of which are separated now.

So it was it was a very devastating scene and and and one that that kept everybody, you know, pretty much trapped until from getting out of their homes, you know, and out of the area until late Sunday.

Well, that included you and that included you as well, did it not, sir?

Yes, it did, actually.

It's I was fortunate enough to to to have an offer from a private party to go up in a helicopter Sunday morning around 930 to to to see what type of damage we're talking about.

And I accepted the offer inside my home on my cell phone.

And then I walked out the front door to to head down to the high school parking lot, which is just about four blocks away from my house to to meet the helicopter and found myself just literally crawling over and under trees that that that were falling across the roadways and sidewalks to make it out of there.

So, you know, kind of a helpless feeling, something that, you know, my former career is in law enforcement.

So, you know, I'm pretty risk averse.

And that that situation is sort of surreal when you find yourself in it.

All right.

Back to Gary, if we can, sir.

The the overall recovery effort, are you satisfied pretty much thus far, anyway, with with the federal response with FEMA, particularly?

Absolutely.

BEMA has been been great.

They've been a great partner.

FEMA, Region six, which is the region that Arkansas falls under.

They're headquartered in Denton, Texas.

They actually had their staff here in Arkansas.

3 p.m. on Sunday.

So that is a very quick response.

Administrator Criswell was was in the state yesterday touring the damage.

I was riding with her, so she got to see firsthand the damage there in the Rogers area.

So very pleased with FEMA.

You know, each disaster is different.

And to be able to get a federal declaration, you have to have a considerable amount of damage to do that and you have to have the data and justification to do that.

FEMA Region six has been great with getting their personnel here because they can immediately see the impact that these tornadoes had on the state of Arkansas, which makes it gives us the information that we can more quickly apply for a federal declaration.

So, yeah, absolutely no problem with FEMA.

Yeah.

Mr. Kerry, what do you have?

Do we have a timeline yet for which individuals, business owners, homeowners can apply for assistance?

Is that mechanism in place?

So we are waiting for a response on our declaration requests.

I expect to hear from that fairly quickly.

And as soon as that federal declaration is approved.

And we think it will be.

But as soon as we get notified of that, we will have additional FEMA personnel coming in to the state by the they're there on standby, ready.

And as soon as they get here, we will start the application process or individual homeowners to start getting that information.

And it's real important at this point that homeowners, you know, if they haven't already, to be in contact with their insurance company, take pictures of the damage so that they have that for future use.

Do we have an assessment?

Is it too early, Mr. Garrett, to get an assessment of of the we said at the top of the broadcast.

Almost impossible to put a dollar estimate on this thus far, but do we have an estimate in terms of structures involved, destroyed, heavily damaged?

We do have some.

And again, this is why we do those flyovers.

This is why we quickly get that data so that we can get a presidential declaration.

So, so far, we know by by from the air counting houses from there that we have over 300, I would say, homes that are destroyed.

We know that the current estimate for debris removal just in the Benton County area is going to be around 20 million again.

And that is just one area.

So that will be quite a bit quite a bit higher.

Okay.

And Mayor Hines, Greg Hines, what the folks in your community and I guess in one sense, Rogers, is every town that's been affected.

What what do you need right now?

What's you know what I know we're moving out of the emergency phase and sort of into this, you know, assessment and a phase of of what next.

And and really that that hinges on the declaration being signed by the president in order for us to proceed forward.

We you you talked about property loss and estimations.

Our facilities director has estimated that that our loss of public facilities at this point is estimated at somewhere around $33 million, maybe a little north of there.

So that hopefully that kind of puts in perspective what what the kind of total community loss might look like.

What we we we have all the tools in place right now.

We've got two dumpsites located or drop off sites located for the the citizens to use to get rid of storm debris.

And you know, I'm telling you, if you just went out to one of those two sites to this morning, you would it's just mind numbing to see what already in this just few days, the citizens have been able to load up and bring it to us.

So, you know, it's this is going to be a months, months long project.

You know, I've been through a couple of ice storms and in a tornado and we've done debris removal and and and those sorts of things numerous times in my 25 years here in the city.

But we're talking we're we're probably talking 5 to 6 passes to pick up all this debris versus what is normally 2 to 3.

Well, I want to stick with you and then go to Gary to the emergency services infrastructure there.

If you got that back up and running.

So so, yes, we do.

We're fully operational from the emergency services standpoint.

A city hall still without power.

Our library, our adult wellness center, you know, or without power, the recreation center, Family recreation center is on to of three phases of electricity.

So it's kind of running ish.

And they need to open next week to accept 300 school age children for summer camp.

So we're frantically kind of moving around and trying to figure out ways to get industrial generators positioned so that we can accept those children.

You know, I think at this point, the most important thing for us is, is just to start getting the storm debris removed from the roadsides and, you know, get power restored to to our residents and and start to to to socialize re normalization of the community.

All right, Gary.

Yes.

So, yeah, go ahead, Mr. Gary.

Sure.

So that was a great question.

Great comments from the mayor.

So there's two different things that we're looking at with FEMA.

The first is I, which is individual assistance.

That will that is what we requested yesterday through the governor's letter.

We will start next week with EPA assessments.

This is public assistance assessments.

And what we will be looking at them is that infrastructure, the damage to the infrastructure we anticipate adding on to this federal declaration if we get it, adding on public assistance.

So we have already visited as Mayor Hines said there, the mayors, the county judges, the city county officials are all already gathering that data that we need so that we can put in for a public assistance, add on to that declaration of age area.

And the mayor, thanks very much for being with us.

Thank you.

And good luck to both of you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And your citizens, of course.

And we'll be right back with more.

And we are back with Chris Bonano of the National Weather Service.

And we're also joined in this segment by the deputy editor of the Arkansas Advocate, Antoinette Gerhart, a native of Rogers.

She was reporting on the chaos in her hometown.

You survived it.

Okay.

That's what I have.

But it's been a busy several days for you.

Yes, absolutely.

It was a crazy way to wake up on Sunday.

The whole of my family is up there and I have a number of friends as well.

And there were a lot of text messages.

Very fortunate on our end that there are downed trees and no power.

But we avoided any major structural damage.

Friends and family, their neighbors not as lucky.

Even just like in my mom's neighborhood, the folks across the street, a tree had come down on top of their van that was parked out front.

My sister, when I got to her house, her family was down the street helping a neighbor who an older woman who said there was a tree on top of her house and she couldn't get out.

So it's it's a lot.

Yeah.

Give a journalist perspective.

You were out among the cars in the chaos, all that.

You're perspective on us.

Yeah, absolutely.

It was surreal to see that kind of thing in person.

Definitely in the core part of Rogers was lots of very old trees that are down.

And instead of seeing things like limbs snapped in half in 2009, we had to flee twice more.

And there are a lot of limbs broke here.

The fruit, the trees are all just like uprooted.

These massive trees there, root systems, just like somebody picked them out of the ground like a flower or something.

And I mean their diameter, or at least as tall as me, if not bigger.

So six or seven feet wide.

I mean, these are massive trees.

They're just completely covering the ground.

The roads are covered in that.

And then power line poles even stopped and have wires are everywhere.

I saw lots of metal light poles that had been beaten.

Have I mean, I know that when can do that, but it's it's very odd to see it in person.

A number of businesses that especially the ones that had like glass in the front, those were just completely shattered, blown out the front.

I was in Decatur this week as well because that's where some of the tornadoes started was out there.

I mean, there's multiple tornadoes at this point.

The National Weather Service in Tulsa Thursday morning gave an update just in the county area and added three more.

Kind of near where my out where my mom lives.

And so I think there are seven tornadoes in the area, but out in Decatur and in Clinton that way, I think the damage to homes was a little bit less because it's a more rural area.

But even just like as you drive into town in Decatur, one of the first things that you see if you're coming from the south is this storage facility that just looks like it exploded.

I mean, there's stuff everywhere.

There's some chicken houses out there.

Same thing kind of as you drive into Bentonville out that way in West Center ten, there's a couple of homes out there with the roofs of been blown off.

There's just it's it's quite a bit, actually, you know, and I'm I know that we do have some loss of life, but given everything that's coming out of the National Weather Service, it's fortunate that it's not Moore.

Yeah.

Chris, is this what you would expect to see from a storm of that ferocity of that velocity?

Absolutely.

And again, a of three tornadoes are quite rare.

I would say 1.5% of all tornadoes are that strong.

So, again, a rare event and it shows the nature of the system that affected Arkansas.

Yeah, and it didn't just affect the areas that we've been talking about.

I mean, the the damage pattern was yet broader than that in one and longer.

That's correct.

That supercell thunderstorm actually moved across the state again, came in from Oklahoma, went through Boone, Marion towards Sharpe County.

Not only do we have tornadic damage, we had some damage to two straight light winds.

The Sharp County Airport measured an 86 mile an hour gusts.

And it's not often we see a gust measured that high because you get to the point where the equipment that measures the wind gets damaged and so forth.

So we don't see that.

But that gave it a really good indication of the nature of the destructive nature of that storm.

Yeah.

So obviously, we were not just talking about that corner of northwest Arkansas.

It was the path was far wider than that.

That's correct.

Yes.

Again, credit for the state and a the last report I've received, three EF three tornadoes.

Yeah.

What this is some of the data indicates this is a bit early for or is it for this kind of storm?

I would say the number of storms that have hit the southwestern United States so far.

Are we looking at especially what does this portend as well?

Okay.

I guess a in here in Arkansas and in general across the United States, this is the severe weather season, so forth.

It's not particularly uncommon to see strong tornadoes in late May.

Now, when June starts here in Arkansas, we'll will have plenty of thunderstorms.

But the the data indicates that climate logically, the season will slow down, so to speak, could get a lot more heavy rain events as opposed to severe events.

So this is not necessarily predictive.

Oh, I would say yes.

Again, we're getting better at receiving the signals, but only in the near term.

But in the longer term, about severe weather potential and so forth.

And some of the models were indicating the potential for destructive storms in the Mid-South and the plains and so forth several days in advance.

Yeah, that's what you were.

I think you heard the conversation earlier in the broadcast about the the governmental and the NGO response to the storms.

Give us your assessment from everything that I've heard.

I was out at the most parliaments Wednesday in downtown Rogers with the FEMA administrator.

And what I was hearing from other local officials and federal officials that were there is a big deal that she was here and that she was here so quickly that it really speaks to the severity of the system and what we're seeing there.

We've had the governor declare disaster early on, and she's asking for the presidential declaration as well.

So that response is working, I think in tandem with locally.

I've seen a lot of folks stepping up and seeing what they can do to help the school system.

For example, They actually had to close early in Rogers.

They were supposed to be in session Tuesday through Thursday and then a teacher in-service day Friday, and they are closing it.

But they've been able to use the high school that's on the first two high schools.

But Rogers High School on the west side of town, kind of as a staging area for things have been serving meals.

They've been collecting donations.

T Mobile has a charging station that people can do, but you're seeing lots of that pop up from big scale to small scale.

So you've had like Wal-Mart and Tyson serving meals and larger organizations like that down to smaller groups.

I saw like a little pop up tents when I was in town Wednesday in a grocery store parking lot.

I think it was the American Legion, the local unit there, you know, passing water out or doing what they can.

So the responses working there, I think definitely what I saw Sunday when I was up there in the immediate aftermath, folks were out just doing the work, you know, picking up the leaves and hand to the curb.

And by Wednesday, Thursday, some of the places that were less severely impacted, those the debris is all lined up on the curb and it looks nice and neat like everybody had, you know, a cleaning a cleaning day or something.

So the work is being done.

It does feel quick.

But and I'm sure it still feels long to the folks that are without power.

Thursday morning, I think there were still 16,000 in the state without power, roughly.

But, you know, steps are being made and people are doing what they can.

But I know just from covering this type of thing in the past that it's going to take a while, even if major things like, you know, stoplights and stuff are back working, that's going to take a while to fully fix things or your roofs and and that type of stuff.

But yeah, people seem to be coming together and they see working together.

That's been a very big message amongst the state and federal delegations.

Those folks, when they've been having their press conferences, it's just talking about how important it is to work together.

Yeah, get it.

Antoinette grow.

Hoda, thanks so much.

Thanks so much for your reporting.

Chris Biondo from the National Weather Service, thank you for coming in and for your insights.

And a special thanks to ABC 4029 for giving us letting us use some of their pictures of that terrible scene.

And that's our broadcast for this edition.

As always, thank you for joining us.

And we'll see you next time.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.