In the early hours of Sunday, May 26, at least a dozen tornadoes plowed through North Arkansas, hitting parts of Benton, Carroll, Boone, Marion, and Baxter Counties.
Carolyn Eiler in Rogers saw substantial damage to her home. Carolyn has lived on Wood Street for 5 decades. The enormous tree that was just a sapling when she bought the house brand new was now on top of her house.
“Do you want to look?” she asked, with an invitation to see the devastation from inside the home. Standing in the living room, it’s clear how intense the damage was in the home. She gestured to the kitchen, where the damage is even worse. The refrigerator has been relocated to one side of the living room. “If you go to the side yard, you can see what’s remaining of the yard.”
Carloyn’s niece Dawn pointed out that you can literally see the tree from inside the house poking through the roof and ceiling into the living room.
The bedroom Carolyn is about 40 feet away from where the tree fell on the house. “This [side of the house] is all fine, thank the Lord,” she said.
Dawn and her husband Jeff live on the east coast of Florida. She said she got a text from Carolyn at 4am on Sunday:
“‘I’m OK, house not so much.’ You pretty much just pick up and go,” Dawn said. “We drove as long as we could [on Sunday] and made the rest of the way [Monday morning]. My husband works for a building supply material company, so we brought tarps and we’re trying to batten it down until an adjuster can come. And then we’ll do the heavy lifting of a rebuild or… hopefully not a tear down, we’ll see.”
Nearly 1,000 homes across Benton County reported home damage, according to county emergency management services. Downtown Rogers was another impacted area. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders walked north up Fourth Street with a line of officials from every level of government. She says right now, it’s important to see everything firsthand and assess where the greatest needs are.
“Having every entity from the city, county, state, and federal side seeing and being able to look and make those assessments at the same time makes a big difference,” Governor Sanders said. “Then we kind of collectively work together on who will take which piece of it.”
Congressman Steve Womack was another elected official on the walking tour of the damage. The group was now walking south down Third Street, and it became stark how some homes were severely damaged while others barely had limbs in their yard.
“This particular house has a lot to be thankful for,” Womack said. “The indiscriminate nature by which a tornado strike a community has always been a mystery to me. How somebody can catch, others don’t, and what is that dividing line … how does that happen? It’s always been a source of interest on my part. Over here you see big branches down, probably not affecting that house. But these guys, probably looking back and saying, ‘We dodged a huge bullet with that storm.’ And then right across the street, assuming they have insurance, it’s going to be a deductible, and then an amount of money for that tree root ball that’s not going to be covered … go figure. Heartbreaking.”
Womack was the mayor of Rogers for more than a decade. He said seeing this damage with his own eyes was important.
“I spent 12 years of my life leading this city,” he said. “I know a lot about it, I know a lot about the heart of the people here. It’s a resilient community. But, even among the most resilient, this is hard to take. You asked how does it make me feel: it breaks my heart. We’ve been dealt a bad hand here, it’s time for us to play that hand as best as we can and look for the good in everything and I think that will keep our spirit.”
Just like at Carolyn’s house, enormous mature trees were toppled downtown. Womack said his major concern is the root balls that had been pulled out of the ground and were dangling in the air.
“Hundreds and hundreds of these things that if left to the homeowner to have deal with is going to result in thousands of dollars of expense that they do not have,” Womack said, “and maybe insurance companies are not going to cover. So developing a strategy for how we deal with this is going to need to happen and happen pretty quickly. Just a lot of challenges that go with it.”
One more block remains on the walking tour, and Congressman Womack continues to think out loud. He wonders how much different the death toll would have been if it had happened at 1 p.m. instead of 1 a.m.
“We probably — just by timing — saw thousands of people saved from some form of personal hardship,” he said. “Easily the death toll could have gone into the dozens if it had struck in the middle of a business afternoon. Think of the kids in school at that time, getting out of school [if it had been any other time]. It benefited from being so late at night, but there’s never a good time.”
When asked if he finds himself searching for a silver lining in these sorts of moments, he said he does.
“The finding of the silver lining, trying to find some means of optimism is what fuels the hope,” Womack said. “And if you have no optimism, and you can’t look for the good in bad outcomes, then you lose hope. This city is full of hope, it’s going to be fine, it’s just going to take it a long time. The ugly scars will be around for a while, the memories will last forever, but we’ll get through this, no question in my mind. Rogers is a resilient community, we’ll get through this.”
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline by reporters. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
