A last look at a perfect storm

To area residents, the ice storm 20 years ago likely will be remembered as the worst to hit the area.  (Gazette archive photo by Greg Felkins)
To area residents, the ice storm 20 years ago likely will be remembered as the worst to hit the area. (Gazette archive photo by Greg Felkins)

The storm that terrorized Texarkana on Christmas Day 2000 may not have been perfect in the understood sense.

It was not the convergence of nature's more extreme excesses in one place at one time. The town certainly has felt nature's wrath to greater degrees at other times. There have been colder spells for longer periods. There have been more torrential outpourings. There have been greater snowfalls and more confining circumstances.

What was perfect about this storm was its ability to maximize damage with little exertion. It was economical. It was efficient. One longtime resident would later call it "freakish." It certainly was an anomaly by local standards.

The temperature never dropped much below freezing.

It was never bitterly cold. The streets in town never froze over. The rain was steady, but not heavy. It did not turn to snow or close the streets. But it froze coming down and accumulated on branches, and when the boughs could take no more and began crumbling all over town, the electric system was pulled down with it, line after line, transformer after blown transformer, sector after sector, until Texarkana was blacked out.

Deep in the age of electricity, it may have been Texarkana's darkest moment.

It would be weeks before the town would be back to normal. And some damage will never be repaired.

A professional forecaster said Texarkana was the epicenter of this ice storm that crushed the region and left hundreds of thousands without power in Arkansas and this corner of Texas. To others, it felt more like the Cold War's proverbial Ground Zero - only this was a natural blast that shook our lives to the core, leaving our trees toppled, our streets splattered with rubble and our neighborhoods draped in white burial shrouds.

One thing is certain, anyone who lived it will never forget it.

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Ethel Tompkins, one of the first black students to integrate Hoxie’s schools in 1955, talks to guests Saturday at an anniversary celebration.

The onslaught began innocently enough, and was truly beautiful in small dosage. Many who attended midnight church services were greeted by the first wave of icy rain when they departed in the wee hours of Christmas morning. The sleet continued with some steadiness all night.

Day One

Children who woke up at dawn seeking the spoils of Santa's sojourn were greeted by a rare white Christmas here. It wasn't white in the traditional sense - it wasn't the stuff snowballs are made of - but instead a glimmering sheath of ice that coated trees and bushes and added luster to the otherwise gray day.

It was a perfect backdrop for Christmas activities - nice to look at from the cozy confines of a living room, but harsh enough to physically avoid.

As morning gave way to afternoon, a bleakness settled in and the ice began falling in steady cadence. Windshields turned translucent with thick sheets of it. Trees and boughs were tortured under its collective weight. Bushes with branches that extended naturally upward had been whipped into willow-like submission. Yet, oddly, the streets had yet to freeze.

There was little traffic on the roads, common for Christmas, more understandably because of the weather. There were few places open because of the holiday - the expected assortment of gas stations, convenience stores and restaurants along the interstate and main thoroughfares. But the normal mad run by residents to grocery stores that follows a freezing forecast would have to delayed by a day. They were closed for Christmas.

Most workplaces were shut down or only opened by skeleton staffs. So when nature's dominoes began toppling early in the afternoon it was a family affair for most of us. We sat at home as the lifelines we all take for granted were randomly cut off. Power lines. Telephone lines. Cable television lines. The Internet. Within a day our ability to get water would also be diminished.

Yet for most, the magnitude of what was engulfing us was still unclear. AEP-Southwestern Electric Power Co. would be by in an hour or so to get the power up, or so we thought. CableOne (now Sparklight) would come by Tuesday and fix its problem. Ditto the phone company, Valor. We knew the drill. We could handle some inconvenience.

But as more and more lines broke the silence grew deafening and the day got darker. And it was more about sound than by any of our other senses that we got our first clear indication of the impending disasters.

Sitting in houses where refrigerators were no longer humming, furnaces were not kicking on, dishwashers were silent and televisions and radios were dead, the sounds of nature's wrath were keeping our ears an nerves on edge.

Giant trees in every direction were creaking and groaning like misers as they reached up their branches to collect those diamonds dropping from the heavens that they would hoard until the growing weight would rip their greedy arms off.

And as their branches came crashing down they were taking service lines with them: Power, cable, phone. But sometimes the picks were random. And sitting inside straining to hear, it was often impossible to know whether it was just your house that was suffering or if everyone around you was in the same fix. But as evening fell and folks peered out from cold houses into lightless neighborhoods, the extraordinariness of these events began to sink in.

By early evening, neighborhood after neighborhood had fallen out of favor. AEP-SWEPCO reported 40,000 customers - pretty much the whole town - without power, and no end in sight. By midnight Texarkana was effectively shut down.

There were a few essential services that had backup power: Hospitals, law enforcement, lockups - but these were exceptions. Texarkana had become a black hole that had sucked out every available star of light. The few businesses that were open earlier in the day closed when their power failed. And those individuals who might have been inclined to bail out and head to more accommodating locations outside the region were having a tough time getting any fuel. Without power, there was no way to pump gas.

The surrounding rural areas were suffering much the same plight. One by one they were blinking off the map. Isolation and a scattered customer base would give a different twist to their story than the Texarkana take, where the sheer density of the failures was oppressive.

Yet without street lights and traffic lights and neon and illuminated store fronts, there's not much difference between rural roads and city roads. State Line Avenue fell into a darkness as visually restrictive as any unlit tunnel. The driver's world extended only as far as the headlight beams. There was no civilization on the periphery.

AEP-SWEPCO had its crews out fighting the icy tide with only minimal success. Nature outnumbered them, and was settling in for a long winter's wrath. But in the coming days bucket trucks and equipment and electric crews from a wide region would swarm into town like an army of ants on a carcass. They would be here long after the storm itself melted into submission.

As an icy drizzle continued to wreak havoc on the foliage and impede utility workers, it simultaneously created scenes that were as surreal as they were sinister: The blue-green glow of transformers popping regularly through the city like low-intensity flashes of lightning. Branches and bushes crystallized with ice that hung into the streets and crowded curbs and created obstacles more akin to the antler-like formations of coral reefs than to the living world of trees and shrubs, landscaping and garden clubs. The fallen remains of limbs and trunks, broken and splintered and scattered that had collapsed on block after block of roadway, making many streets impassable.

Texarkana felt like a war zone that had just been rocked by mortar round after mortar round. Yet it looked like a glassy maze. Pretty and pathetic, we were.

Day Two

The next morning brought little hope. Cold and cloudy and confident from its first-day dominance, the weather continued to muster its icy forces. Dec. 26 was simply an extension of its rule.

Residents peeked out from under their covers to discover that nothing much had changed, that for most it was pretty much as cold inside their house as it was outside.

The city was powerless and in many ways cut off. Many radio stations were off the air for lack of power. Television stations were still broadcasting from Shreveport, but unless you had a battery-operated set, it was a moot point. We were becoming national news, with everybody except us privy to the details.

The newspaper was available in some parts of town, but the newspaper plant was without power and would stay that way for 48 hours. If you didn't have power it didn't matter whether your cable TV line was up. Internet users had much the same problem. They had to have both power and a phone line or cable, plus their Internet provider had to have power. And while scattered households throughout the city had phone service, most of us were cut off - unless we were fortunate enough to have cell phones. (In 2020, cell phones were not ubiquitous, or even that common.)

As sleet continued to fall, AEP-SWEPCO was losing ground. Lines were coming down faster than they could put them up. More and more crews were pouring into town but until the icing stopped little improvement would be noted.

Households, on the other hand, were finding ways to improvise. The Christmas candles were put to good use, as were wedding candles, flashlights, pen lights, book lights, and a wide variety of survival supplies - some likely left from Y2K stockpiles.

Christmas decorations looked strangely forlorn and useless sitting in the shadows. Much of the decorative remnants of Christmas - the trees and stocking and wreaths and such - would remain up for weeks, as other tasks took precedence.

Yes, we found ways to make do. Families bunked in single rooms. We learned to navigate homesteads and keep up with our personal items by flashlight. We would flip light switches out of habit that would turn on nothing. We would function out of a minimum number of rooms - maybe the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. And most of our rooms were cold and cheerless. We cherished any heat we could create.

It was a fire marshal's nightmare. Gas stoves, camp stoves, kerosene lamps and space heaters, candles and fireplaces, anything that would burn, provide light or heat were enlisted. Some folks in homes that had no options would stay with neighbors, friends or relatives that had access to some heating remedy.

Shelters were being set up around the city. The Red Cross, The Salvation Army and many churches got involved. There was plenty to do, and plenty to commiserate about.

And as the day dragged on, the water supply failed for lack of back-up generators. As the supply petered out, the city' ability to provide fire protection became a concern and the ability of households to function efficiently became a challenge.

Without water, dishes weren't washed. Without water or power, clothing wasn't done, and laundry piled up. Without water, there were no showers, no baths and the toilet tanks wouldn't refill.

When the pressure started to wane, some people collected water in jugs and pans and pitchers. Others put pots and ice chests under the eves of their roofs to collect the rain runoff for their toilet tanks so they would flush. It would be the next evening before water flowed back through our pipes again, but we didn't know that.

What wasn't the only flow problem many people were having. In the era of electronic money, credit cards and ATMs, cash flow was also a concern. After the long holiday weekend, many people were left without much cash in their pockets. And if you didn't have cash, for all practical purposes, you didn't have money.

Without electricity, ATM machines didn't work. Banks were closed because their computers couldn't operate. Businesses, if they had power, had to deal in cash, or maybe checks, because the credit card machines were offline for lack of phone service to verify transactions. People couldn't get to their money and they couldn't use plastic.

Finding gas was a critical Day Two issue. Most stations stayed closed for lack of power to pump. When a few gas stations got restored for short periods of time there was a run on them, and long lines formed for fuel. Some of these stations opened intermittently as power went on and off. Some customers failed to exercise their better natures.

Late in the evening, a handful of gas stations north of Interstate 30 on State Line Avenue got power back. Every pump had a line six to seven cars deep that extended out into the street, and most waits were more than an hour. On the other side of the interstate, one station opened up only to lose power, leaving lines of frustrated customers stuck in the dark.

As the night progressed, we carried into our sleep time the images we had collected from the last 24 hours. Many people recall lying in bed, hearing the groaning and splitting of pines and hardwoods and the falling of branches and wonder just how safe they were inside. Some would make mental notes of the proximity and lean of various trees in their yards. Some would image the worst; some would nearly experience it.

Christmas Day and the day after saw many trees topple in Texarkana, crushing sections of people's houses and garages, leaving gaping holes in roofs and in the ground and large sections of roots protruding.

The lack of power and the continued threat of falling trees sent many people who had the resources scurrying for cover in towns outside the immediate area - Marshall, Mount Pleasant and Magnolia - anyplace that had warmth and water and trees still standing upright.

Late on Day Two the temperature pulled itself up just above freezing, and the sleet turned to rain and the power lines began to thaw. It was a breakout point for the utilities, but when the rest of us got out of our warm beds in our cold houses, it became apparent just how much work there was to do.

Disaster brings out the best in people and the worst. There seems to be no in-between. Neighbors would open their houses up to neighbors and near strangers. When there were breaks in the ice fall, residents would get out and help clear streets. There was a sharing of resources and misery.

A mobile church kitchen at one point was dishing out 400 meals a day. Police were handing out bottled water. People were looking out for each other and checking in on each other.

But the blackout also brought out the opportunists and some of our rudest behavior. There was a small amount of looting and vandalism, and a curfew was put in place on Day Two that lasted several days. But it was some of the behavior by shoppers in the few businesses that were open that was most appalling. Fights broke out in several stores over prized merchandise. People were eating food in the aisles and opening and drinking bottled beverages. Altercations and heated arguments erupted in several gas lines. The rarer the commodity, the more vile the behavior, it seemed. Bottled water was in great demand when city water dried up. Flashlights, candles and batteries were high on the list. People who were trying to bring supplies in from nearby towns were often out of luck. For example, you couldn't find a D cell battery in Magnolia, and probably not in a 50-mile radius. The demand was too great.

Day Three

As Day Three dawned, people were finally having a close look at the damage. Trees on houses. Trees on fence lines. Limbs on vehicles. Trees with half their branches missing, or larger limbs still trapped high in the tops. The amount of tree litter and sticks on the ground was incredible. Utility hooks-ups were pulled off houses. Telephone poles were split or broken and some poles dangled from their wires.

In the next few days the chain saws would be broken out and the trunks and branches cut and piled on curbs in hopes that the city would cart them away. And as the self-cleanup progressed on the home front, a rash of chain saw-related accidents followed. They kept emergency rooms busy.

As more residents began realizing there was no quick fix to the disaster, gas-operated generators began popping up at a few houses in unrestored neighborhoods. During the day you could hear the growls of chain saws cutting through the mess, and at night you could hear the grumble of isolated generators percolating in the distance. But most people just stuck it out with whatever accommodations they managed to pull together.

Continuing Saga

By Day Five, almost half the AEP-SWEPCO Texarkana customers were still without power. And it would be another 10 days before the great majority of that backlog was cleared. This, in spite of an additional 1,600 workers - there was that much to do.

CableOne and Valor also brought in hundreds of extra work crews or contracted with additional workers to expedite the rebuilding process. Most started early and worked late. But they often couldn't get into areas until after the power company had cleared them of downed lines and electrical hazards.

For weeks, Texarkana looked like a distribution center for bucket trucks. You could find scores of them in staging areas like the Four States Fairgrounds, and often six or eight of them would line a street as they got ready to systematically rewire a neighborhood. Deep into January utility trucks could be regularly seen working in the alleys, while cleanup crews dealt with the multiplying piles of tree debris that were collecting in large piles along the curbs.

Snow began falling again on New Year's Eve and continued into the morning hours, Day Seven. It piled about five inches of fluff over much of the wood piles that had been heaped up. It didn't hurt much, but it didn't help either. It was more of an inconvenience than anything.

There were a lot of other services that suffered during the storm and its aftermath. Flights in and out of Texarkana Regional Airport were canceled for about a week.

After-Christmas sales were pretty much a bust for retailers. Residents had their eyes focused on essential buys. A luxury might be a $500 generator to get lights back on at home. Not many cars were sold.

The regional timber crop took a big hit, later estimated at $64 million. And state and national officials shuffled in and out to survey the damage, shake their heads and tell us help was on the way.

There were two fatalities directly related to the storm. A Genoa, Arkansas, tractor-trailer driver was killed on Dec. 26 when a falling pine tree crashed across the windshield of the rig he was driving a few miles south of Texarkana. And in late January, a man contracted to clear debris was electrocuted when he came in contact with a downed electric line.

There is also no doubt the extreme conditions placed terrible stress on the elderly, the ill and the home bound.

Seven weeks removed from the storm, the reminders were still all around us. There were piles of debris virtually everywhere. The time for removing it had been extended another two months. It would be many more months before the obvious signs were removed. And some losses would never be calculated.

Nature's unnatural pruning butchered the skyline of many established neighborhoods. We could only guess as to the shape of trees to come. Many were already so grotesque it was better to put them out of their misery than to save them.

And many of us would no longer be so oblivious to the threat of ice and snow. The tools we gathered to survive this onslaught would be stored for the next round. We would be better prepared, we hoped.

What is curious about this disaster is that there was no central image or event that stuck in our minds and adequately summed up the situation. Instead, we were left with lots of scattered and often personal impressions. There was not one freeze frame that told the tale. Instead, most were repeated a hundred times.

So we were left to play host to thousands of mental snapshots that cumulatively reflected the million points of misery that seemed to rain down equally on all of us during those bleak days.

This was a Christmas season we all truly shared.

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