The recent storms caused damage in many parts of Arkansas, including Russellville. Now, residents have been working to clean up.
RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. — The strong storms that swung through Arkansas on Wednesday evening left behind some damage in parts of Russellville.
“We’re sitting here working, and you get a phone call from a friend that says, hey, I think your house just got blown away,” explained Amanda Armstrong, a resident of Russellville.
Upon hearing the news, Amanda and her husband Jimmy Armstrong left straight from work so they could check on their home.
“We just loaded up in the car and drove over there. And the whole time you’re thinking, how it can’t be our house. There’s no way it was our house,” said Jimmy.
When they arrived at their home, they were shocked at the damage.
“I was just, oh my gosh. Did that really just happen? It’s just shock. You know, you can’t imagine. You can’t imagine. It’s just wind, and it just took our house, our roof off,” described Amanda.
The damage that was sustained was just a fraction of what happened during the storm on Thursday evening.
It made its way through parts of town, bringing streamlined winds of up to 70 miles per hour. It also knocked out power, and damaged structures like here.
“It looked like a war zone, [there were] trees limb, and I had to drive on the sidewalk because part of our roof was in the road,” said Jimmy.
However, the Armstrongs weren’t the only ones to face damage.
Down the road at Arkansas Tech, heavy winds also left behind damage on parts of the university campus.
“I had a couple of places where some fairly large limbs were down. Unfortunately, those three limbs fell on the cars of three different individuals here at Arkansas Tech,” explained Sam Strasner, the Director of University Relations for ATU.
Luckily, there were no injuries reported to anyone on campus. However, Strasner shared that the storms were something he hadn’t seen in quite some time.
“First of all, the rain was coming in absolutely sideways, and so that was kind of the first indication that there was something unusual happening,” he added.
Now, the restoration process has begun.
“Our office of facilities management took up the task of removing not only this large limb here, but a couple of other places on campus,” said Strasner.
The Armstrong family also shared similar sentiments of neighbors helping neighbors.
“They all went to their house and got a hammer. Well, I went and got nails, but they stayed there till it was dark, when we got done,” added Jimmy.
Their next steps in the restoration process are to wait to hear back from their insurance company for additional information.
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