FEATURE STORY
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LOSING SLEEP in the
By Randy M. Kemp County Lines Editor
Fighting off impending disaster can be a black cloud with a silver lining. Just ask De- sha County Judge Mark McElroy, who forged a deeper friendship with neighboring officials and citizens while struggling to keep surging floodwaters from breaking through levees in his Missis- sippi Delta region. “We appreciate all the
prayers – they were answered. We were spared a breach in the levy. Where it did break through was where it was designed to, so that damage was restricted to some areas that are historically flood-prone.
Judge McElroy “We are thankful to the good
Lord that we had no more damage than we did.” Probably 15 families lost homes, he said, in addition to upwards of 100 cabins and deer camp structures. Like so many fellow Judges throughout Arkansas, the focus has turned to “trying to clean up and rebuild, and help put people’s lives back together.”
“Tis was one of those worst-case scenarios,
really touch and go – it was a one-in 500-years flood, I imagine.” Judge McElroy said he lost sleep wrestling with whether to evacuate the en- tire county for safety reasons. His silver lining? “I really bonded with Chi- cot County Judge Mack Ball. We were working side by side at 2 a.m. building levees. I didn’t have the money or manpower or equipment to fight this alone, but having a buddy bail- ing out water next to you is really worth a lot.” McElroy has 19 years experience as a County Judge, while Judge Ball is in his second term. “He helped me as much as I helped him,” Judge
McElroy added. “We worked as a team, with mayors and emergency personnel. It was an all- out team effort.” “One thing that Judge Ball and I had to deal with was to just keep panic from breaking out in the streets. It was one of the scariest things I’ve gone through in my career. I had people wondering whether to move everything they own out of the county; the safety of thousands of people in your hands will cause you to lose sleep. And Judge Ball, he’s wrestling with the same thing, and our sheriffs were, too.” Te OES people likewise did an outstanding job during that time, said Judge McElroy. “We had to schedule meetings almost daily
over nearly six weeks, speaking to thousands of people, just to keep the people from panicking.” He would go to a little town of 150, and there would be 250 who showed up to get the lat- est word, said Judge McElroy. “We were fight- ing literally thousands of rumors and myths. It was hard to do our real work for trying to keep
people calm.” And church attendance went up by 20 per- cent in his county – “a trend I hope will contin- ue,” he said. “Too often we call out for mercy in times like these, and after the storm is over we forget to thank our Maker for His divine help.” As far as following an official emergency
plan, “You have to have one,” agreed McElroy. “Yes, we have one; it’s as thick as an encyclo- pedia. But you can’t have a plan that really ad- dresses an emergency. It’s a good idea in theory, but it comes down to making a thousand deci- sions an hour for your citizens. It takes a lot of teamwork, and a lot of quick decision-making. And a lot of prayer.” Judge McElroy was able to relate another
positive that came during the stress of fighting the waters: “We had a wild hog run through Arkansas City a block from the courthouse. It ran under the mayor’s house and was shot. We love pork chops; now we are watching for cows in town, because we really love steak!”
‘We had more water than anybody could remember...’ “We had more water than anybody could
remember. Te oldtimers in the county said it flooded in places they’ve never seen it,” said Jackson County Judge Jeff Phillips. Te floodwaters began accumulating less than four months into his first term as County Judge. “It was stressful, but everyone has pulled together, and it has worked out well.” Between the U.S. Corps of Engineers, volun- teers, and state inmates working side by side to
COUNTY LINES, SUMMER 2011 Judge Phillips
fill and stack sandbags, it was a one-for-all, all-for-one team- work process. Of course the business community pitched in as well. “A sand company gave us maybe 50 to 100 dumptruck loads of sand,” said Judge Phillips. Tankfully, the sea of water
did not all accumulate in one place – it moved
DELTA
north to south. From Jacksonport to Elgin, then on to Grubbs, then on to Amagon and Pennington, the water was threatening, but it kept moving, so they were able to track with it. “It wasn’t all at once; if we’d had to deal with Jacksonport and Grubbs together, we’d have re- ally been stretched,” he added. “It was just amazing how well people worked
together. Tere just wasn’t any fussing or fight- ing about anything.”
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