FORT SMITH, Ark. — After severe storms blew through the night of Aug. 16 and into the early morning hours on Aug. 17, residents in the River Valley are left picking up the pieces.
All across the River Valley there was severe tree damage on houses, cars, and the roads. However, Van Buren resident Kristina Combs was able to avoid severe damage from a large tree taking a tumble in her yard.
"I woke up out of a dead sleep and seen the wind moving it, so I immediately went and grabbed the kids and put them in my bed, and next thing I know, probably about a split second later, we heard a big boom, and it just the ground shook and shook the house and then next thing I know, tree." Combs said.
While Combs feels lucky to have not lost her power, she says she won't have any plumbing until at least Monday.
"The plumbing got busted, and I'm waiting until Monday to figure out anything more with it. But as far as we know, it's good, besides the plumbing, it has not flooded the house yet." Combs said.
She adds that after seeing that tree down, it took her and her kids a little while to recover.
"It took us a minute to go back to sleep. They were all roughed up in the bed, scared, holding my hand and everything trying to go back to sleep, and then the wind just kept, you know, hitting the house over and over. So it was a little bit overwhelming." Combs said.
However over in Fort Smith, Aiden Stafford, a resident at Aspen Heights apartment complex, wasn't as lucky with power outages or damage.
"I was actually, out here, right when the wind started picking up. And then all of a sudden, the transformers or electrical boxes just blew out. And then there was a big gust of wind, and I was standing right next to my apartment. And then this, you know, beautiful tree, decided to just take a big rest on my truck." Stafford said.
As far as the power goes, they are still working on getting it up. However, with a large tree on the complex's power line, it complicates things.
"They told me, you know, they should, it should be up by today. But as you can see, there's still no power in the entire apartment, or what I think is the entire apartment." Stafford explained.
As for his truck, Stafford says he just bought it in the last month.
"You see those things that you kind of just see in movies. You never really think it's gonna happen to you. And especially, I just pulled this vehicle out, maybe not even three weeks ago, and it's kind of devastating for you know, something like this to happen, especially, you know, you're just trying to make it, you know, kind of make it in this world. And it's like one minute you take one step, you get knocked back three more steps." Stafford said.
However, he's just happy no one got hurt.
"I'd rather be in my truck than in an apartment that happened to be living with one of these people, and, you know, could have been severely injured, but luckily, nobody was hurt, and that's what I'm happier about." Stafford said.
And just moving here from Corpus Christi, Texas, he said this is a nice welcome to the state.
"It's like, you know, welcome to Arkansas." Stafford joked. He was able to get the tree off his car with the help of his neighbors.
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