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

The Arkansas All Times and Little Rock Public Radio.

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

The legislature is nearing the end of its regular session, with some significant items still on decided.

That's for a future program.

For now, we focus on the early April storms that held much of the state captive for days.

Thunderstorms that created tornadoes.

Rain clouds that seemed inexhaustible.

Lightning that illuminated the landscape.

And not for the better.

The casualty count as of midweek was three deaths and more than a dozen injuries.

The damage to public and private property was still being assessed in this edition.

What we know of the losses thus far and what is being done to assist the afflicted areas and get their people back on their feet.

Governor Sarah Sanders saw flood damage in the northeast Arkansas city of Hardy on Monday.

Speaking later that day at Russellville, she said federal assistance would be coming to help in recovery.

Just a few minutes ago, I was in Hardy, Arkansas, one of the hardest hit communities in the state.

I had the opportunity to meet with local and state officials and survey the extensive damage.

We're thankful that President Trump approved Arkansas emergency request over the weekend, which has freed up an enormous amount of federal resources that will be focused on rescue and recovery efforts.

We are very grateful to the president for his quick action to help our state.

It's going to take a long time to recover and rebuild from the damage that has occurred over the course of the last several weeks.

But we are strong and I am confident and I know, especially after hearing some of the heroic stories that took place in Hardy, that Arkansas will come back and be even stronger and better than even before.

With us now, AJ Geary, director of the State Emergency Management Department.

Director.

Gary, thanks for coming in.

Thank you.

Is it too early for even a gross assessment of the losses in terms of property damage?

It is.

As you know, this is an ongoing event as water start to recede up, recede up in the north part of the state.

We're still having some rivers and that crest are right at crest.

Now in some of the lower parts of the state.

So we still have houses that are being damaged, but we're we're doing damage assessments now on the homes starting up north and working our way down through the state.

Yeah, but obviously, under the millions of dollars, there will be quite a bit.

We we have teams here with from FEMA, region six that are with my team.

They actually started doing the damage assessments for individual homes this morning.

So we'll get a better idea.

It'll be a few days before we get that total.

Total number.

Again, with flooding is a little bit different than tornados.

Tornado comes through.

You can immediately see that damage with flooding a lot of areas.

We have to wait for that water to recede so that we can find all of the damage not only to homes, but to our credit, our infrastructure here in the state.

Yeah, maybe just an anecdotal impression thus far, but much of the damage was water related as opposed to wind.

Or do we know this latest event?

Yes.

You remember early March or mid-March, we had tornadoes come through that impacted Cave City.

Right.

Right after that in other parts of the state.

But right after that, we had this this current event that started last Wednesday.

We have some tornado wind damage from that event and also flooding.

So it was it was we were hit twice, not just with wind and tornado, but also with the water damage.

Yeah.

Has it stressed the state's response team coming so close together?

So I would say that we have been very busy these last few weeks.

Thanks to Governor Governor Sanders, he immediately did a state of emergency which allowed us to stand up the state Emergency Operations center.

We followed that with she made a request for an emergency declaration from the president, which was approved that allowed us that declaration allowed us to bring in federal resources.

So we were able to bring in a federal search and rescue team that worked very closely with our state search and rescue teams for some swift water and high water evacuations.

All right.

Looking looking ahead, since we've had we seem to be having these major weather events of such and such intensity that is somewhat unusual.

Is the state going to be called upon to, uh, to do more of this?

Are we prepared to do more of this?

Should that be the case?

You, I think, are you quipped?

I mean, yeah, I think we are.

And as you know, as we talk coming in here, I see you quite often.

And usually when we have events like this in the state of Arkansas.

So we have some great partners within the state, our other state agencies.

The way we operated at the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management is we rely on those other state agencies as being a part of all of our emergency support functions.

So think about the Department of Transportation, Department of Health, Human Services, state Police.

They're all a part of our response effort and recovery efforts when we have events here in Arkansas.

In terms of the federal response.

You know, FEMA comes to mind.

Are you satisfied so far with the FEMA response?

Absolutely.

Actually, from this event started on Wednesday.

Within a few hours, we had some FEMA teams, individuals from Region six, which is located in Texas, Denton, Texas.

So they immediately came up, they brought additional support staff.

And they are, like I said earlier, they are with my team right now doing those damage assessments.

Well, it's a policy question and not necessarily a recovery, but but they are intertwined.

There is a great deal of talk, as you know, in Washington about reorganizing FEMA, even abolishing claims and pushing that back toward the states.

Your thoughts on that?

So we have a very good relationship with our FEMA region six.

So throughout the nation, FEMA's divided into regions.

So we have had great support out of our region.

Six personnel that have come up here.

They historically have always been great working with us.

It remains to be seen what will happen on the federal level.

But there's no doubt in my mind that that under Governor Sanders leadership and our legislators, that that we will be able to handle whatever comes our way.

But you're not faulting FEMA as it is presently constituted.

You're satisfied with our our region with FEMA has, as always, responded very well to to our needs.

Very quickly.

And so we've not had any big issues with that in terms of what happened over the last several days.

What is the state prepared to get to do more a larger share in terms of the actual hands on recovery?

Or is that going to be left to the private sector assisted by FEMA?

So so the way it's set up right now, what once we get the damage assessments done?

Yeah, depending on what those damage assessments show us, we would probably if the numbers work out, we will request a federal declaration, which will open up individual assistance, and that is for the homeowners and also open up public assistance.

And when we talk about public assistance, we're talking about that infrastructure.

This flooding event is going to have a huge impact on our local communities, our cities and our counties as far as road repairs, bridge repairs and things of that nature.

So if we get that federal declaration for for, say, public assistance, that opens up additional funding programs that can assist our local communities.

Yeah.

Is there the major sites of damage right now?

Can it can they be isolated, pinpointed?

It's really tough right now.

We know, you know, the governor visited Hardy.

I was up there with her.

We saw the damage there.

But this is so widespread.

Like I said, so far, we've got about 63 of our 75 counties that have been impacted in some way by this weather event to public infrastructure.

Mm hmm.

You mentioned roads, bridges and etc., like that.

Any is it too early for an assessment there?

It is never going to be substantial, I would guess it is.

And what we're doing first is the individual assistance.

We're doing preliminary damage assessments on the homes.

It's, you know, people first making sure that our citizens are okay as soon as it'll take us a few days to do those complete damage assessments.

Once we're done with that, we will immediately roll into the infrastructure and public assistance damage assessments.

So then we'll be looking at all the roads, all the bridges.

We have some city, county buildings that may have been impacted.

So that's all part of that public infrastructure.

Water systems that were impacted by the flooding.

And that could be wastewater or drinking water.

So we'll really be looking very closely at what that damage estimate is for for the infrastructure.

But it's going to be substantial.

We think it will, yes.

Yeah.

Now, you mentioned water systems.

Another what about utility service of, say, electric and natural gas?

Yeah.

So, you know, the great thing about Arkansas is, you know, at the peak of I think this event, we were we were at 120 hundred and 30,000 without electricity, that they were able to move in pretty quick and get that electricity back up.

They're usually very good here in the state to get those utilities back up.

But there are going to be significant damage to that, whether it's, you know, power lines, downed power poles down through the through the wind.

So we're working with especially those municipal power associations.

So we will be getting the number from them and what that impact is.

Yeah.

And this being 2025 communications, so much of the communications traffic is based around cellular availability and and wi fi or Internet communications.

Can you assess that losses there?

Yeah.

So as far as dollar amounts, we can't.

But we we have through the response phase of this, not only this event but the one a few weeks earlier, there was some damage to one of the cell towers during the Cave City.

So we work very closely with our partners in the cell cell phone industry.

So we were able to get deployable assets up into those communities working with them that could help get that communication back up.

All right.

In terms of this particular event, do you want to put it compare it to other recent events, say, on it?

Well, since your tenure anyway.

Yes.

So, again, you know, it's really tough to to say which disaster or event is worse than another one because it it really you know, that focus is on the individuals.

That depends on whether your house was.

And you're exactly right.

If if it's your community, it's going to be the worst one we've had.

It's really tough now, you know, once we get all the damage assessments in and all that, you know, you can look at, you'll be able to look at it and say, monetarily wise, which one is worse than the other?

But, you know, over the last three years, I've been in this position for for over nine years now.

And, you know, March 31st, two years ago, we had the central Arkansas tornadoes that hit much of the central Arkansas.

And when that was a huge impact last year, North Arkansas, northwest, Arkansas, tornadoes, there was a big impact there.

You know, you go back to the 2019 Arkansas River flooding.

I know you and I spoke, you know, very quickly after that one that was a huge impact.

Hit a lot, a big number of counties in our state.

And like I said, we're we're at 63 counties that are impacted in some way or another storm such as as weather events like disasters such as this, Does it tend to give policymakers or state agencies government that state or federal?

Does it tend to illustrate or illuminate weak spots anyway in the public or private infrastructure?

So every time we have an event, we try to look at it and say, okay, what?

You know what, if anything, did we miss?

What could we do better on, you know, things of that nature?

So a lot of times after especially a larger disaster there, there is some policy changes.

I don't know of anything right now that that I would recommend or we'd look at.

We're one of a few states in the nation that also has a state disaster program.

So we have state by state AI and state mitigation programs.

So if we have a disaster event that doesn't reach that threshold.

All right.

For a federally, federally declared disaster, we can implement some of our state programs.

So our legislators have been very good about funding that over the last quite a few years.

Yeah.

AJ Gary, the director of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, thank you very much for coming out.

Thank you.

And we'll be back with more in a moment.

And we are back.

Joining us now with a look at that system that caused so much damage.

National Weather Service warning, coordination meteorologist Dennis CAVANAUGH, thanks very much for coming aboard.

Thanks for having me.

So we know what happened to storms.

Sure.

But can we go to the organics?

Another one.

How did this evolve?

Sure.

So we got ourselves into a weather pattern that we call like a blocking pattern.

Basically, we had a large trough over the southwestern United States, a large ridge over the east.

And here in Arkansas, we were stuck in between with southwest flow aloft, which left cold air to our northwest and very warm, humid Gulf air to the southeast.

Kind of caught in the crossfire was absolutely in that transition zone.

The storm system just ran southwest and northeast over the state of Arkansas for four days in a row, which was quite unusual.

That shopworn phrase is this, though, the new normal.

This is not the first time we've endured something like this in recent years.

That's true.

Yeah.

You know, we know extreme weather events are becoming more frequent.

You know, I can't sit here and say that that's going to be the new normal for Arkansas.

Right.

Extreme weather events are becoming more common across the world in general.

And so we can expect just extreme weather events to happen more frequently than they have in recorded history.

Okay.

You have been on the ground, especially in southeast Arkansas, assessing the damage, taking a good look at what this system did.

Absolutely.

And your reflections on that, your findings.

So, you know, we go out and assess tornado damage after a storm and we were able to find evidence of two two tornadoes in Arkansas County.

One was an EF two, one was an EF one.

But the most remarkable aspect of this entire storm system, I think, was just the immense amount of water that was on the ground.

Even when we were trying to survey storms, it was very difficult to survey the entire path of damage because there were so many flooded roads and water prevented us from being able to get to those areas where we need to assess the damage.

It rained and rained and rained and kept on raining.

I mean, over a foot in some places.

It did, yeah.

We had a swath of anywhere from 10 to 15 inches of rain.

Just an immense amount of water fall from areas of west, central and southwest Arkansas through central Arkansas and into northeast Arkansas and northeast Arkansas in the higher terrain of the Ozarks.

And then back in the southwest, some of the higher terrain of the watch tors or where we had some of our biggest flooding impacts.

There are some obvious financial implications on this, and not only for the damage that's done and the repair and restoration.

We've got a bunch of farmers over there on the delta that need to get a crop in.

That's true.

Yeah.

And you know, the a lot of the a lot of that farmland is along the lower White River basin.

And we're not going to see crests on the Lower white for another week still.

So some of those agricultural impacts, you know the some of the flashier rivers and the higher terrain, we've already seen those crests.

But those crest are moving downriver and that flood wave is still yet to hit those very sensitive agricultural communities.

And this is coming after some of that area was parched to begin with.

It was yeah, We came out of an area of unusual dryness into this, just an incredible amount of water and flooding in a short period of time, which, of course, produces just catastrophe.

It does.

Yeah.

The we saw with the city of Hardy, I saw some of the video footage this morning where homes were just wiped off their foundation.

We had trees deep barked by debris flowing in the water.

And it's the same type of damage that you would see with a violent tornado, but it was floodwaters that produced that damage.

And Hardy, you you describe this a second ago as a global evolution of our weather systems like that.

It's not unique to Arkansas, not unique to the United States.

That's correct.

Yeah.

We're seeing high impact weather events all over all over the globe.

It's not just unique to Arkansas.

It's not just the United States problem.

It is a global issue where high impact weather events are becoming more common everywhere.

And what to do about it?

Right.

Well, a lot of it is a lot of it is built on relationships.

So we at the National Weather Service were responsible for forecasting the weather, responsible for letting folks know what those impacts are going to be before they happen, which we felt really helped out the folks of Hardy.

But that was our relationships, working with those local safety officials.

If you don't have that built in trust, it's hard for people to take the appropriate action.

In this case, they were able to evacuate over 1500 people and Hardy so that when those floodwaters raged through the city, we didn't have any fatalities.

And that was all due to the relationships that we have with local, state and sometimes federal officials that allow us to build that trust before a disaster strikes so that everybody is on the same page and we can take the appropriate action before these disasters hit our communities.

And I think that's important to build globally.

But as much as we can control, at least here in the United States and at least our office in particular for folks here in Arkansas.

Yeah.

Back to the nature of these storms.

Again, we've talked about the frequency, but the intensity seems to be significantly greater.

That's true.

Yeah, This this was an incredibly unusual event.

10 to 15 inches of water.

The average return interval for a lot of this was, you know, something that we only expect to see once every 100 years.

And those once every 100 year type of events, bit heavy rainfall events, be it severe weather outbreaks, those are the things that are becoming more common and they may end up rewriting the average return interval on some of these really high end catastrophic type weather events.

Yeah, it would.

Not that long ago we had the Cave City incident.

We did.

Is there a pattern evolving here?

Well, a geographic or even even seasonal pattern?

Certainly, yeah.

There has been some research done that suggests that Tornado Alley is shifting to the east.

So where we have expected the maximum of tornadoes in the United States to occur across Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, that's now shifting a little bit further to the east, impacting more of the southeastern United States.

And of course, those areas just east of the traditional tornado alley includes Missouri and Arkansas.

Here at home, not necessarily not well, it's not good news.

No, it's not not great news.

A little spooky.

It is absolutely.

The there are, of course, have been cuts in federal spending.

Budget cuts like that hasn't.

Has it affected your agency here?

Well, we are.

We are.

You know, we do we are struggling with some staffing issues, but a lot of a lot of folks are.

So, you know, we're just as we've always done, whatever resources we're given at the National Weather Service, we'll do the absolute best we can to continue to continue to provide top notch service for the American people.

And that's that's all we really have control of.

And.

Well, and an element of that is the trust that you mentioned between local authorities and the weather service.

Has that been lacking in some instances?

So my time here in Arkansas, we've I've worked continuously as the morning coordination meteorologist.

One of my primary jobs is to build up those relationships with local, county and state partners.

And I feel like, you know, our office people working with me and our just our fantastic safety officials here in Arkansas, I feel like everybody's been on the same page to try to accomplish that same goal of keeping everybody safe.

So I love the public safety officials we have here in Arkansas.

They're incredibly dedicated people.

They always are very forthcoming with working with us.

And I just I really appreciate the heck out of them and their efforts.

The the storms that we've experienced in recent, my recent years, for that matter, there's been no rural urban divide.

Actually, you know, the capital city, Little Rock, got clobbered last year, not once, but twice.

That's true, if memory serves.

And then this year it was more a little more rural than it was urban.

That's true.

So the pattern is there is no pattern.

Right, in terms of that, right?

Yeah.

You know, it it doesn't really matter whether you live in a densely urbanized area or if you do live in those rural areas.

We just saw in March, March 14th, that tornado outbreak that largely hit rural communities provided extremely high impacts.

Some of those impacts are going to leave scars that last a generation.

And Arkansas, like the rest of the country, is going to have to do some.

It sounds like, if I'm hearing it correctly, we're going to have to do some planning about future construction, future enterprise, our future climatological future.

Yes, Yes.

With high impact weather events that really just brings into focus the necessity for building up community resiliency.

And that's going to have to be done on all fronts.

Nobody, nobody is immune to the impacts of more high impact weather happening more frequently.

So it's it's been important and it's always going to be important that we work together to when we do have quiet periods and the weather that we utilize those time periods in order to work together to build up our communities, build up the infrastructure, build up our relationships and communications so that when the the worst of the worst strikes, we can tackle it together.

And it's been proven we can show document that that does make an impact.

It does save lives.

Well, it's more of a FEMA question, I suppose, than than a Noah question.

But can you see a timeline for recovery, particularly in the areas that you visited Southeast Arkansas?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's you know, the some of these areas impacted especially by the flooding.

When you see homes that are wiped off their entire foundation, it's going to take a really long time.

I mean, you know, you're probably right and that FEMA might have a better estimate or maybe local safety officials have a better estimate of how long it will take to recover.

But, you know, some of these impacts, when you wipe out a community down to its foundation, it can take a whole generation to recover from that.

And just like our March 31st tornado here in Little Rock that we had 2023, you can still see the scars of that moving through the community.

You know, it's going to take time to build back and to let everybody be able to appreciate the new normal that arises after that.

All right.

Dennis CAVANAUGH of the National Weather Service, thanks very much, as always, for coming aboard.

Thank you, Steve, very much.

Appreciate the time.

Absolutely.

And that does it for us for this week.

As always, thanks for watching.

See you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.