NORTHERN ARKANSAS – Overnight, bad weather tore through northern Arkansas on Sunday morning, killing eight.
At a press conference, Benton County Judge Barry Moehring stated that one person had died in the county and called it a disaster. A second death had been reported in Baxter County.
Daniel Bolen from the Boone County Office of Emergency Management reported that a third person had died. She was a 26-year-old woman who was found dead outside of a destroyed home in the town of Olvey.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office reported two more deaths on Sunday afternoon, both of which were thought to be caused by the storm.
Moehring said that search and rescue operations are being carried out all morning by fire and EMS teams.
Downtown Bentonville’s Debbie Griffin put out a statement early this morning asking people to stay off the roads because multiple power lines were reported to be down.
The Metroplex event center in Rogers has also been turned into a shelter, as the storms have damaged homes in the nearby towns.
Our content partner KNWA says that Rogers police are dealing with gas leaks, closed roads, and people who are stuck in their homes or businesses. They also say that Rogers, Bentonville, and Decatur are getting a lot of big damage.
The Arkansas Department of Transportation also said that Highway 340 at West Chelsea is closed because a boulder wiped out part of the ground below the road.
PowerOutage.US says that as of 1:40 p.m., more than 88,000 people in Arkansas are without power. Most of the outages are in the northern counties, such as Benton, Carroll, Madison, Boone, Marion, Baxter, Fulton, Sharp, and Randolph.
Over 40,000 people were without power when Carroll Electric activated its Emergency Restoration Plan. Neighboring electric companies helped get the power back on.
A news release says that Sheep Dog Impact Assistance is helping with the recovery efforts by putting together a team that will be based at the Center for Nonprofits in Rogers.
After the storms, many churches in northwest Arkansas also didn’t hold services.
