June 14, 2010 - Devastation is the only way to describe what Beth and I saw Sunday at the Albert Pike Recreation Area. Many news reports from various sources have mentioned rising water as the culprit and we may have a false sense of the situation. Thousands of trees were knocked down. Cars are scattered hither and yon, some standing on end and a tractor trailer rig stands wrapped around trees. Recreational vehicles and campers are tossed around as though Mother Nature was a child having a temper tantrum.
Vacation homes are off their foundations or gone entirely. This was more than rising water. This was fast moving water. This was a flash flood that occurred in a wilderness campground in pitch black darkness. By the time the sky began to lighten the Little Missouri River had already changed from its normally placid depth of three feet to a raging twenty-three foot wall of death and destruction. The National Weather Service reports, "The river crested just over 23 feet, which is the highest level since records began in 1988 (according to the USGS...or United States Geological Survey). This shattered the previous record by 10 feet! It appears this was the deadliest of all weather related events across the region since the tornado outbreak of March 1, 1997 (25 fatalities)."
Raymond Slade, a Texas-based U.S Geological Survey hydrologist and an expert on floods, said that the amount of rainfall could have exceeded seven inches in an hour, a phenomenon so rare that scientists call that a 100-year rainfall. Slade said, "This was much greater than a 100-year rainfall. That flood that occurred was much bigger than a 100-year flood, where those people were camped."
Brain Injuries Are LIke a Flash Flood
Just like that torrent of water tore through the campgrounds unexpectedly, no one plans to have a brain injury. The USGS hydrologist said this event was much bigger than a 100-year flood. Well, so is a brain injury...much, much bigger. (continued below)
Over the past several years many people have shared their brain injury stories with us. Since June 11, we've heard other stories. A cousin of Beth was camped at Albert Pike Recreation Area that night. He told of how he, his wife and two children tried to escape the rushing water by climbing a tree. And he told about how his wife slipped, falling into the raging torrent that carried her to her death.
I thought of the many caregivers who have emailed me or contacted me in one of the many brain injury forums. Caregivers who waited in a hospital for news about their loved one. Some had been carried away, never to return; others lived to discover that a part of them died to brain injury. In both instances, lives were changed forever.
We had stopped at Pilgrim's Rest Baptist Church in Lodi, Arkansas on the way to Albert Pike. That was the gathering place for families: families of both the missing and the deceased. Many of these people had driven to the wilderness campground. Now, however, their vehicles had been washed away by the roaring Little Missouri River. They waited.
Many brain injury victims continue to wait for their former memory, their former cognitive abilities, their former personalities to return. Most, however, have been swept away by the injury that came like a thief in the night, stealing what they held most valuable.
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If you would like to read Larry's other article published at onlinelittlerock.com about the Arkansas Flash Flood and see the 50 photos he took, click this link: Arkansas Flash Flood. (This will open in a new window.)
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