Storm turns Brushy Creek into wall of water

She had just woken from a sound sleep. It was early Saturday morning, very early, around 1 a.m.

"I felt something against the trailer," she remembered. "I thought it was the dog.

"But no. It was a wall of water!

"I opened the door and saw water rushing by with people's belongings. I asked my husband how many minutes we had left to live. He said ---- we're going to die."

Next door, Hawk woke up and reached for his cigarettes. Instead, he grabbed a handful of water. He headed for the kitchen to check the clock to see if it was time to start the coffee pot.

"It was 1:30 a.m.," he remembered. "I grabbed the doorknob to look outside when I felt the house move like an earthquake. I fell to my knees, holding on to the doorknob, and rode it like a surfboard."

His nephew, Josh Gerster, had been awake, sitting up talking with his Aunt Gail.

"I heard something snap in back," Josh recalled. "Something hit the side of the trailer. Then, Hawk came walking out and said a water pipe had burst. He opened the door, and oh my God, it felt like an earthquake. It looked like we were floating in the middle of a river."

What Josh and Hawk experienced was a flash flood that lifted their home and moved it 25 feet to the creekside where a cedar tree stopped its advance.

All along Brushy Creek Road, (CR 560) where the creekbed follows the roadway, homeowners were scrambling to make sense of a flash flood that caught them by surprise.

Josh remembers it raining steadily through the night but didn't think much about it until a wall of water demolished Hawk's saw shop and sent the house floating off its foundation.

Josh didn't have much time to dwell on the damage because his strong back was needed elsewhere.

Neighbor Shelia Evans had just crawled out a window of her trailer home, headed for high ground with two oxygen tanks for her disabled husband, Luke, who was still inside.

As luck would have it, her son, Charles, arrived home. Both Charles and Josh carried Luke to high ground. Not an easy task wading through raging waters littered with debris.

"I was sopping wet from my waist down," Josh recalled. "I was lucky to have boots with some tread. Things kept hitting me in the legs. We made a loop around to get to the house. That was the easiest way. And, we had to climb over a car hood."

Josh said he made several more trips through the dark and muddy waters to get Luke's oxygen equipment out of the house and onto high ground.

Shelia said they loaded Luke into a vehicle and took off for her mother's home, located near Dry Fork.

Thoughts of returning home later that day were quickly set aside when they were told that the roadway was impassible, Shelia said.

"We had to wait to get in," she remembered, "until the road department made it passable."

"When we did return, we found our van," she recalled. "It looked like someone had picked it up and put it on the road. There was hardly any damage to it. But, my car was full of mud. It got swept up and its rear end got caught on the porch."

Shelia said her storage building was found nearly a half-mile away, totally intact and usable, except that it was lodged in a tree.

"We've been trying to figure out how to get it down," she said.

Shelia wasn't the only one trying to figure out how to right the wrongs of a creek gone mad.

According to Carroll County Sheriff Chuck Medford, raging waters were responsible for damage to three bridges, seven vehicles, three house trailers, one boat and "too many out- buildings to mention."

Medford said he started receiving phone calls late Friday night and early Saturday morning from people reporting heavy rainfall and damage to roads. A search and rescue team was activated at one point, he said, after a resident became concerned about a neighbor, but the search was later called off.

"Everyone was accounted for except for one 21-year-old single man," said Medford. "Basically, we checked the roads and checked to see if anyone was in danger. There were no injuries to people."

County Judge Mike Botelho said the damage appeared to be localized. He said rainfall exceeding six inches in less than an hour was reported in the Brushy Creek area and another nearby resident reported 11 inches in less than a hour.

He said county crews worked over the Fourth of July weekend to repair as many roads as possible. He said the approach to one county bridge was lost and several roads were closed by fallen trees.

County roads affected by weekend flooding included CR 560, CR 739, CR 506, CR 514, CR 924, CR 549, and CR 717, which was limited to a single lane because of an extensive series of deep washouts.

Botelho said the recent flood damage was sufficient to declare a local state of emergency for Carroll County.

He said the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management had been notified and he asked Governor Huckabee to include Carroll County in any disaster declaration issued by his office.

"While it appears that the damage value may not exceed the threshold for federal assistance, the declaration of a county emergency may cause individuals with uninsured flood-related damage to qualify for state disaster assistance," Botelho said.

He encouraged people with uninsured flood-related damage to contact his office and have their name added to a list, should a state declaration be forthcoming.

In the meantime, the folks along Brushy Creek are helping themselves and one another.

There has been talk of a fundraiser to pay for a community dumpster to hold all the debris left scattered across the landscape.

Hawk said he was approached by three Hispanic men, professional mobile home movers, who offered to skid his trailer house away from the creek ---- for free.

"They said they'd jack it up level and skid it back off the creek," Hawk said, adding that he's responsible for "scaring up some concrete blocks" for foundation work.

"I'll have some major repairs, but the neighbors are banding together," he said. "In fact, the whole mountain is coming together."

He also noted that the tragedy has brought out the best and the worst in people.

"We've had to run off scavengers," he said amazed. "People looking for air conditioners and tools. You'd have to see it to believe it.

"But, others are good people," he continued. "We've got friends and neighbors who are all good folks. We'll pull it together. We'll do it for each other."