COUNTDOWN IN HISTORY
2000 ice storm leaves mark on city, region
History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.—Cicero
Ice can appear fragile, reflecting light as it is suspended from a tree branch. But those who lived through the 2000 Texarkana ice storm know how destructive frozen water can be.
When it weighs down tree limbs and power lines—sending them crashing to the ground with a sharp crack like gunfire— is a deadly force to be reckoned with. Christmas night 2000 was a long, cold, sleepless night in the Texarkana area. In a region known for mild winters, any chance of ice or snow is an unwelcome one. Any storm is fodder for conversation. But December 2000 has gone down in history as “The Ice Storm.”
And those who witnessed it will never forget it.
“There were several problems we had never dealt with before and hope to never deal with again,” said Texarkana Emergency Management Director Dave Hall, reflecting back on the event a few years ago. “It really created problems. Every day there was a new issue.”
No one expected a storm of that magnitude.
Before the ordeal would finally end during the first week of January 2001, the storm would leave 329,000 to 367,000 people without electrical power and cause untold numbers of residents to temporarily flee the city seeking warmth.
It would ultimately cost one of the major power suppliers more than $35 million in work crew overtime, along with electrical equipment repairs and replacements.
Besides electric power restoration costs, the disaster became a financial drain on residents’ pocketbooks and the insurance companies covering homes, cars and other property damaged by falling limbs and trees.
“Nobody ever anticipated that much snow or ice,” Hall said. “There was not a light on between Hope and Mount Pleasant. It turned out to be a huge nightmare. I remember driving out of the basement at BiState and not seeing a single light. It was very eerie,” he said.
The storm began late Christmas morning with droplets of freezing rain and sleet gradually icing over trees and shrubs.
Bridges and overpasses also received coatings of up to 3 inches of ice, although most major roadways were passable because concrete surface temperatures remained well above freezing.
But conditions worsened as the day wore on.
By early Christmas afternoon, residents began to hear the first cracking and snapping of heavy limbs, as the thick coating of ice weighed down the trees. It didn’t take long for the falling limbs to start severing electrical lines throughout the city, taking out the lights and heat and bringing many Christmas dinners to a cold halt.
Many residents used to minor ice accumulation expected the power to be back on within a few hours. But this storm was dramatically different than most had ever seen.
Jason Hansford, meterologist with the National Weather Service in Shreveport, La., was working Christmas Day when the storm hit.
“Prior to the Christmas ice storm, we had not had a significant storm like that. It had been a while,” Hansford said. He has “no doubt” the storm will be remembered for years to come because of it’s severity and because it happened on a major travel holiday.
Hansford said there were actually several weeks of unusual winter weather beginning with a smaller ice storm earlier in December 2000.
By the time the Christmas ice storm rolled around, trees and limbs that were already damaged were destroyed. “Whatever was left standing after the first storm probably fell during Christmas,” he said. Electric company c r ew s descended on the Texarkana area, cutting their own holidays short to help out. Some crews came from as far away as Beaumont, Texas.
Freezing rain continued steadily, and the temperature hovered between 28 and 34 degrees, not nearly warm enough to thaw the collecting ice.
“It’s probably going to get worse before it gets better,” Scott McCloud, spokesman for AEP-Southwestern Electric Power Co. told the Gazette on Christmas Day 2000.
By sundown Christmas night, about 40,000 Texarkana residents and all of DeKalb, Texas, were left without power.
Falling limbs not only littered streets—some crashed through roofs, injuring residents and causing property damage. It was a long, cold night and sleep was hard to come by.
Olive Street residents Ben and Margaret Cobb took refuge at nearby Wadley hospital when a huge tree crashed through the roof of their home.
“It was raining in the living room, and it was as cold inside as it was outside,” Margaret Cobb told the Gazette after the ice storm.
“It (the ice storm) brought out the best in people; it also brought out the worst in people.”
Texarkana, Texas, resident Bill LeFan compared the sounds of limbs hitting the roof to sounds he heard fighting World War II.
“It was a miserable day and night,” he told the Gazette just a few days after the ice storm.
As Dec. 26 dawned, winter sunlight revealed telephone lines sagging to the ground and tree limbs and branches scattered about as if a tornado had struck.In Mandeville, Ark., Mittie Lou Brock, an 84-year-old self-described “country woman,” passed the time by cross-stitching in the glow of candles and an oil lamp. Meanwhile, in Texarkana, the roar of chainsaws could be heard as some homeowners began to clear roadways and driveways.
Hospitals, nursing homes and jails began flickering back to life as emergency generators kicked in.
But the majority of the city would still have a long road to recovery.
Motorists, including truck drivers, were stranded on Interstate 30 and running low on fuel.
“It seemed like problems continued to compound. The water treatment plants didn’t have backup plans, a lot of places with generators were low on fuel, and inmates at one of the jails stopped up the toilets,” Hall said. “You would never have convinced me there could be a storm that would knock all the water plants out.”
In addition, some police officers and firefighters were iced in and couldn’t get to work.
“I remember there were huge challenges the department had to overcome. Just like everybody else in the city, our officers had no power or heat at home. One of our officers had a tree fall through his house. They were dealing with personal issues and they had to come to work,” said Capt. Shawn Vaughn, commander of central records and communications at the Bi-State Justice Building.
In December 2000, Vaughn was working in the services division of Texarkana, Ark., Police Department.
“I was working some 16- to 18hour days,” he said.
Police were busy directing traffic as well as being on the lookout for looters and price gouging for hot commodities such as water, building supplies, batteries and generators.
“Someone was selling a single bottle of water for $5,” Hall said.
Vaughn remembers the line at Albertsons on State Line Avenue snaking all way to the back of the store.
“Some people were cutting in line, and there were several disturbances related to that,” he said.
Business boomed at local liquor stores.
“We’re swamped. People are lining up,” one store owner said the day after Christmas.
Power was eventually restored to priority locations, and crews began focusing on restoring power to residential areas.
Using motels and gas stations at Interstate 30 and North State Line Avenue as a staging area, work crews restored electricity to about 5,000 customers in the immediate area as they worked around the clock to repair damage to roughly 146 transmission lines, 89 substations and 328 distribution circuits.
Besides SWEPCO, work crews with Souhwest Arkansas Electric Cooperative pitched in to restore power to its 20,000 powerless customers while Bowie-Cass Electric Co-op did the same for some 22,800 of its Texarkana customers.
Along with the power companies, city street crews started clearing roads of tree braches while local emergency managemet teams coordinatd communication between the differ-
ent public safety and social service departments.
The local branches of the Red Cross and Salvation Army, as well as several churches, worked to find food and shelter for displaced residents.
By Dec. 29, about 18,750 SWEPCO customers living in Texarkana still had no power.
To make matters worse, on New Year’s Eve, a snowstorm blew in and carpeted much of the same area as the ice did a week before. The storm temporarily slowed, but did not stop, the recovery effort.
SWEPCO completed all power restoration operations by Jan.7 at a cost of about $35.4 million in employee overtime and equipment replacement and repair costs.
For Bowie-Cass Electric Co-op and Southest Arkansas Electric Cooperative, it took roughly a week to two weeks longer to finish their power restorations, at an estimated cost of $6 million to Bowie-Cass and $5 million to Southwest Arkansas Electric.Valor Telecom had all its damaged and severed phone lines back in service by the first week in February 2001.
Financial figures in terms of debris removal and economic impact vary widely.
Bowie County’s preliminary damage cost estimates for all three categories initially showed $172 million (about $65 million for homes, $12 million for debris removal and $100 million for general economic loss).
Figures for urban areas in terms of home damage, debris cleanup and economic loss also vary.
Texarkana, Ark., estimated a $10 million bill for all three categories—including $3.1 million for homes, $3 million for business losses, $4 million for debris and about $50,000 for emergency response personnel overtime.
FEMA eventually granted Bowie and Red River counties $3 million for debris removal, along with $10 million for affected Arkansas counties, of which about $950,000 went to Texarkana, Ark.
Debris cleanup for the whole area would last well into into March 2001, while some tree trimming continued for several years.
Hall said with a storm of that magnitude, it is hard to say if emergency officials would do anything differently in the future.
“Nobody can really anticipate that much snow or ice. I don’t know if you could do anything different,” he said.
It is possible to keep extra supplies around the house in case of an ice storm or other natural disaster.
Hall advised everyone keep extra supplies like flashlights, firewood if they have a fireplace, extra water and canned goods on hand.
“It’s a good idea to have a week’s worth of nonperishable food on hand along with bottled water,” he said.
Parents of infants and young children should keep extra baby food and diapers around in case of an emergency.
“Don’t wait until the last minute to go to the store,” Hall said. “What was happening during the ice storm was people were hitting the store all at once.”
Not everyone was patient either, he said. “It (the ice storm) brought out the best in people; it also brought out the worst in people.”