The Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK—Water rushed through two gaps in a neglected 60-year-old levee near Pocahontas, threatening some communities in the Arkansas prairie with their worst flooding in more than a quarter-century.

The Black River sliced through the levee before emergency workers and volunteers could stem the tide with a mountain of sandbags. The Black enters the White River near Newport. Forecasters issued a flash flood warning for the White River despite clear skies.

“You may be wondering why we issued a flash flood watch in eastern Arkansas when there is little to no rain in the forecast,” John Robinson of the National Weather Service in North Little Rock wrote Sunday in an e-mail to reporters.

“There will be water going into areas where people have not seen it before, and may not be expecting to see high water,” Robinson wrote.

The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management said water broke through two spots of the Black River levee. Spokeswoman Renee Preslar said the break was fueled by water pouring in from soaked southeastern Missouri, flooded into outlying areas to the south.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers worked through Saturday night to place sandbags along the failing levee, Preslar said. As of early Sunday afternoon, Preslar said the fix appeared to be holding.

“Right now, it’s kind of a wait-and-see game,” she said. “They’ve repaired what they were able to repair and they’re waiting to see if that will hold.”

Corps of Engineers spokesman P.J. Spaul said the levee near Pocahontas was built in the 1940s. The levee district charged with its maintenance dissolved in the 1960s, leaving it to sag and have trees to grow up in its banks over the last 40 years, Spaul said.

“There were two, 24-inch pipes that cut through the levee. At one time, they had closure gates on them, but they couldn’t be closed” Saturday, Spaul said. “Everything was rusted out on them.”

Sunday, Corps of Engineers advisers headed south along the river’s path to help other cities, Spaul said.

“What we’re seeing here is a lot of these levees are quite old, 50 or more years old,” he said. “Some of them have been well maintained, but a lot of them haven’t been.”

State emergency management officials have already estimated damage to homes, businesses and infrastructure at $2 million. Forecasts show it will likely be the middle of this week before rivers statewide see significant drops.

Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe, said Sunday that officials continue to monitor the situation along the White River and in parts of the state.

Beebe has declared an emergency in 35 counties, about half the state: Baxter, Benton, Boone, Carroll, Clay, Conway, Craighead, Crawford, Faulkner, Franklin, Fulton, Greene, Hot Spring, Howard, Independence, Izard, Jackson, Johnson, Lawrence, Logan, Madison, Marion, Nevada, Newton, Pope, Randolph, Scott, Searcy, Sharp, Stone, Van Buren, Washington, White, Woodruff and Yell.