MOUNTAINBURG -- A confirmed tornado ripped through this Crawford County town Friday afternoon, leveling 200-year-old trees and tearing roofs from buildings.
Four people were hospitalized, three people were rescued after being trapped in houses and 160 buildings were damaged, said Brad Thomas, the emergency management coordinator for Crawford County. There were no fatalities.
Crawford County Deputy Jim Freeman said there were several minor injuries, and one woman went into labor during the storm.
"He brought us one and He didn't take one, hopefully," Freeman said while standing in the rain directing traffic away from downtown Mountainburg, where downed high-line wires blocked U.S. 71.
Jeff Hood, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Little Rock, said video footage indicated at least one more tornado Friday near the Howard County community of Umpire. He cited reports of "quite a bit of damage" along Arkansas 278, including to homes, and stretching into the Ouachita National Forest at the county line.
The tornadoes struck as a slow-moving storm system, stretching from Minnesota to Louisiana, raked across Arkansas. National Weather Service offices warned late Friday that more tornadoes were possible before the storm system exited Arkansas.
The University of Central Arkansas evacuated Carmichael Hall -- an all-female, freshman dorm -- Friday night after its roof was damaged, officials said. No one was injured. Residents were escorted to the nearby student center, across the street from the dorm.
The dorm holds about 240 students, and the university was securing rooms for about 30 students to sleep in Friday night, said the university's Christina Munoz Madsen. Some students elected to stay with friends, and others were being assigned vacant rooms, she said.
Authorities in Mountain Home evacuated Hiram Shaddox Geriatric Center after it received storm damage, said Anthony Reed, administrator at nearby Baxter Regional Medical Center. Early details were limited, Reed said.
The nursing home is licensed for 81 beds, according to the Arkansas Department of Human Services. No injuries were reported as of 9:30 p.m., according to Tim Boyd, a Mountain Home Police Department dispatcher.
Melody Daniel, public information officer for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, said a gas line ruptured at the geriatric center. In Baxter County, at least three different buildings were evacuated, including an apartment complex, displacing at least 90 people, she said.
Entergy reported 4,930 outages across Arkansas as of about 11:30 p.m. Friday. The bulk of the outages were in Faulkner, Jackson and Baxter counties, according to the Entergy outage map.
"They [the outages] have been sort of moving through the state. It goes with the storm," Entergy spokesman Kerri Case said.
In Mountainburg, Farnese Kimes, 71, said she heard that a tornado was forecast to hit at 4:19 p.m. Friday. She took refuge in her bathroom and started praying that her children, who live elsewhere in town, would be safe. They were, but much of the roof was ripped away from Kimes' rock house.
"God is good," Kimes said. "My kids are OK, and if my kids are OK, these are just things," she said pointing to her destroyed house. "If they're good, I'm good."
Thousands in Crawford County were without power late Friday afternoon. Mountainburg, population 624, sits just east of Interstate 49, about midway between Fort Smith and Fayetteville.
Devin Tillman, 30, of Springdale said he was driving south on I-49 in his Toyota Tundra when he saw "circulation" come over a hill southwest of Mountainburg.
"It was a low-lying cloud, and it was moving quick," Tillman said.
He stopped to shoot video from inside his truck, then realized that the tornado was almost on top of him.
"I didn't know there was a tornado right behind it," Tillman said. "I left my truck and took off running and got up underneath the underpass. A couple of other people were already there. It was super loud. It sounded just like a freight train rolling over you."
The National Weather Service in Tulsa confirmed the tornado through storm reports, meteorologist Pete Snyder said. The weather service will survey Crawford and Franklin counties today to learn more about its size.
State police confirmed that a twister touched down in an uninhabited part of Montgomery County, staying on the ground for about 4 minutes, said Gary Fox of the Montgomery County sheriff's office. No injuries or property damage were reported.
The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management received damage reports from 12 counties as of 11:30 p.m. Friday, Daniel said.
Downed trees blocked roads in the town of Potter in Polk County, she said. As of 8 p.m., the department had received no confirmed reports of tornadoes outside of Mountainburg, she said.
"There's quite a bit of damage across the state," Daniel said.
A mail carrier based at the Mountainburg Post Office was reported missing during the storm but was later "located safe and sound," said Sam Bolen, a spokesman for the Postal Service. The carrier was "stuck for a while due to fallen trees and was out of cellphone range," Bolen said.
The slow-moving system and the threat of tornadoes lingered late Friday over Texas and Louisiana north all the way to Iowa, The Associated Press reported.
Temperature swings are forecast in Arkansas over the next few days as a cold front pushes through.
After high temperatures in the 70s Friday, they will dip below freezing in parts of north Arkansas early Sunday before rebounding into the 70s on Tuesday, said Brian Smith, senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock.
"It's springtime in Arkansas," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Dave Hughes and Ginny Monk of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 04/14/2018