Buffalo River Flood 2000
Posted on June 5, 2007
Filed Under General |
Each year on Memorial Day weekend, our friends and families have a tradition of camping and floating the Buffalo National River in north Arkansas. We’ve camped at different places along the river over the years, but the last few have been at Wollum, near St. Joe Arkansas.
There was a time, when we would cross the river at a location called, Mount Hersey, and camp on the other side where we didn’t have to deal with lots of traffic. Mount Hersey is a popular area for putting canoes in and taking them out. It was advisable to cross only if you had 4 wheel drive, and only if the river was low enough. Needless to say, some that drove cars or 2 wheel drive trucks, decided to leave them on the other side.
On Memorial Day weekend in 2000, after listening to it rain most of the evening, some of our campers awoke about 4am to find their tents & sleeping bags were now in the water! There was no way to get back across the river at this point, and the only way to higher ground was to follow an old road that wasn’t often traveled. We didn’t have much choice but to try it. Even if the road ended up in the middle of nowhere, we knew we’d at least be away from the fury of the rising river. The road did eventually get us back out on a highway, but now the challenge was to try and get back around to the vehicles that were left on the other side of the river.
Unfortunately we were unable to reach the vehicles before the river did and the best that anyone could do, was to tie the vehicles off to stationary objects so that the vehicles wouldn’t float down river. I think we were all just thankful that no one was hurt because it was potentially dangerous situation.
The following day, the people with flooded vehicles, headed back up to the river only to find that the National Park Service had already contracted a local weasel to remove them. When our group finally learned where the vehicles were, the weasel wanted a small fortune to get them out of impound. He wouldn’t even let people get their personal belongings out of the vehicles until they paid the impound fee! The story gets longer and nastier, but everyone finally got their vehicles back in the end, even though most were “totaled” from an insurance perspective.
So…what did we learn from all this? We learned that tempers flare and nerves get short when people are faced with a life threatening situation. We learned that we should always prepare for the worst and be ready for the worst to happen. We learned that once everyone headed in the right direction, it was all for one and one for all, (none of us were about to let anyone else get hurt or in trouble). Finally, we learned that the memories that we sit and laugh about now, were created through some of the most stressful and trying times.
Have a good day today,
Chris
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haha. funny story.. reminds me that i need to get away from my computor sometimes.
Ain’t that the truth! Thanks for dropping by!
Chris