Craighead County, AR – (JonesboroRightNow.com) — April 10, 2025 — Lake City and Monette residents are still cleaning up after a series of storms hit the area last week.
These storms brought several tornadoes and flooding to Arkansas and the Midsouth, with flooding impeding cleanup.
Monette Mayor Bob Blankenship said tornado cleanup was going slowly with all the water.
“It’s going slow, but we’re getting there. We’ve had some volunteers come in and help. We’ve got some coming in today and we’ve got some coming in tomorrow so that’ll help us, but we’re probably about 15 to 20 percent cleaned up. We still have a lot of debris to get loaded. All of it out in these fields and things, it’s not too safe out there. They’re still so soft from all the rain and it’s just that you can’t get out there,” Blankenship said.
Blankenship said the emergency part of the cleanup is over, and the city is moving into more minor cleanup.
While the city has not received as much help due to this week’s flooding, Blankenship said he expects more to come this weekend.
He said teams of volunteers were helping today and tomorrow, such as a crew from Nucor, who will be cooking and cleaning up debris on Friday; students from Trumann Schools, who worked Wednesday and returned Thursday as well, and a 15-person team from the Arkansas Department of Corrections’ work release program on Thursday.
“If the weather will cooperate with us today and not rain, then we’ll get a little more done today,” he said.
Lake City Mayor Cameron Tate said the flooding slowed down cleanup efforts, and that the city received 11.5 inches of rain.
However, Tate said the city still saw lots of volunteers, including Southern Baptist Disaster Relief and PF Plumbing, as well as Traveling Hope, which are all working to remove debris from homes on Highway 135.
“They came in and did a lot of the cleanup and got the brush to the road and the trees to the road,” he said. “Now, we are fixing to build a road to our burn site and start hauling off. I don’t know if we’ll get to it this week, but for sure next week. So, we can start moving forward on a lot of this.”
According to Tate, crews have likely cut 80 percent of the trees down that needed to come down so far. Although they do not have any debris hauled yet, he said they have a burn site with the proper permits at both areas of town that was hit and would not have to travel far for the haul-off.
As for the tornado sirens damaged during the tornado, Tate said that three of the four had been repaired, however the fourth siren was still missing.
Tate said he has not heard anything from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) yet.
“I have not heard a single thing [from FEMA] but that’s not saying that they don’t care. I think it’s just due to all the flooding that’s across the whole state,” he said. “The good thing is that we get to compile this whole storm as one storm system so that should help us get some federal money because I think the threshold is $5 million in damages and, statewide, I’m sure we’ve had that.”
Tate urged residents to keep debris, brush and trees separated during cleanup, as ensuring debris was not burned was the only way the city can be reimbursed if FEMA comes in.
Craighead County Judge Marvin Day said he felt the cleanup efforts for both the tornadoes and the flooding were going well.
“The [Craighead] County Road Department has got the roads pretty well clear,” Day said. “We still have quite a bit of damage in the areas that are flooding. There’s quite a few areas on the west and south side of the county where there’s still a lot of water that are being worked on.”
As for the road crews, Day said that they were back to their routine maintenance for the most part.
“The only exception to that is that we’ve got some areas that are flooding that we’re having to monitor. Just waiting on that water to go down so we can repair some roads.”
As far as the tornado cleanup itself, he said that the county was caught up on what they could do to help. Day added that he has not heard anything definitive from FEMA yet.
“It appears they’re going to more than likely declare a federal disaster that would include all aspects of public assistance as well as the cleanup efforts, but I don’t think we’ve seen everything,” he said. “I noticed that they’re still in town last night working in our area, so I don’t think we’ve seen anything definitive.”