MAYFLOWER - A tornado that demolished hundreds of homes and businesses has claimed a 12th victim in Faulkner County, raising the storm’s Arkansas death toll to 16.
A pregnant woman who was injured when the tornado struck miscarried, Faulkner County Coroner Patrick Moore said Monday.
She was given a birth certificate for the female baby, which was a factor in counting her daughter’s death toward the storm toll, Moore said. The mother, whose name and condition were not available, was about seven months pregnant and lived southwest of Vilonia, he said.
Moore said he thought the infant died in a Little Rock hospital a few days ago after the mother was transferred there from Conway.
Pulaski County Coroner Gerone Hobbs did not return a phone message seeking comment Monday.
Meanwhile, a federal disaster declaration for Faulkner County was amended to add Pulaski, White and Randolph counties. The expanded declaration, announced in a Federal Emergency Management Agency email to Arkansas congressional members, will trigger the release of federal funds to help those communities recover from the storms.
As of Monday, federal disaster assistance for Arkansans already had topped $1 million, FEMA officials said in a news release.
Under the expanded disaster declaration, “Homeowners, renters and business owners in those counties may now register for state and federal assistance with the Federal Emergency Management Agency … and report their uninsured or underinsured property damage or destruction from the storm,” the agency said.
The EF4 tornado killed three people in Pulaski County and one in White County. Randolph County suffered heavy flooding generated by the storm system.
“This action allows us to help many more eligible tornado survivors in Arkansas,” said Timothy Scranton, FEMA’s federal coordinating officer. “We urge survivors in all four counties now designated for individual assistance to register with FEMA as soon as possible. We want to help, but survivors have to register to start the process.”
On Monday, the White House made preparations for President Barack Obama’s visit Wednesday to central Arkansas to view the devastation and to talk with families affected by the devastation.
The president also will meet with “first responders and recovery workers,” the White House said in a release.
U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, an Arkansas Republican whose district includes Faulkner County, said he is among those invited to attend the first-responders meeting. The White House has not released details of the president’s visit.
Despite praise from many storm responders, National Weather Service meteorologist John Robinson said the service is “getting all sorts of comments about why the tornado was not rated EF5 in Vilonia,” where the storm destroyed much of the town’s business district along Main Street.
Tornadoes are ranked on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which assesses damage to structures. The 2011 tornado that hit Joplin, Mo., claiming 161 lives and destroying much of the town, was ranked anEF5.
Robinson said in an email that a house with “a foundation built with nuts, bolts, and appropriate-sized washers” would likely be destroyed whether a storm’s rating was EF4 or EF5.
Ratings should not be based on damage to a single structure, he said. In Vilonia, he noted, “There were still some tall, skinny trees standing along a drainage ditch/ small creek about 100 yards away” from the site of a house where the storm came closest to exceeding an EF4 rating.
Another issue, he said, is how much damage was caused by the tornado itself rather than by flying debris from other structures.
Robinson said this storm did toss about “a much greater than normal number of vehicles.” But he said vehicles arenot taken into account on the rating scale.
“No one is certain enough of what it takes to do that with a car to put it on there,” he said.
Among the many objects tossed about by the tornado was a large storage container thrown onto the roof of a school that was under construction and heavily damaged in Vilonia.
“It weighed approximately 25,000 pounds, counting the container and its contents,” Robinson said.
Most houses are not built to standards that would produce expectations of withstanding even some EF4 winds, he said. But with today’s technology, a high-rise building would likely be constructed with the aim of withstanding such a tornado’s winds, he explained.
Besides, as far as insurance companies are concerned, it doesn’t matter if a tornado is rated EF4 or EF5, he said. The typical Arkansas homeowners’ insurance policy will apply either way if a “windstorm” was the cause of damage, he said. Nor is the storm level a factor in determining whether the federal government will grant financial assistance, he said.
Robinson said wind engineers have been invited to central Arkansas for a second opinion on the storm’s level. But he cautioned, “Usually they go less than meteorologists.”
“A lot of wind engineers do not think the Joplin tornado should have been rated EF5,” he said. “They thought it should have been rated EF4.”
Robinson believes that the dispute about whether Arkansas’ tornado should have been EF5 or an EF4 boils down to “strictly what I would [call]bragging rights.”
“Our home is our castle,” he said. “Everybody likes to think their house is going to protect them. What the engineer told me today is, most houses are going to have major damage if [winds are] 130 mph.”
Winds in the Mayflower-Vilonia tornado reached almost 200 mph.
Robinson said one woman complained that the weather service was calling the storm the Mayflower-Vilonia tornado and leaving out the name of every other community hit.
“Well, we don’t have 600 characters” of space for the tornado’s title, he countered.
On Sunday, the Faulkner County sheriff’s office arrested a man authorities said was trying to steal a four-wheeler from the ravaged Plantation subdivision on the banks of the Arkansas River outside Mayflower.
David Larry Griffin, 72, of Malvern was charged with felony theft of property under a state of emergency, misdemeanor criminal impersonation and misdemeanor criminal trespass.
According to the affidavit accompanying the charges, Marcus Patterson, who lives on Plantation Drive, said a man loaded his son’s four-wheeler onto a black trailer. Patterson said he told the man that he owned the four-wheeler and that the man should unload it. The man did so but, before leaving, told Patterson that his name was John Smith and that he was with the sheriff’s office, the affidavit says.
Another man who lives nearby took a picture of the man’s license plate and said the man also was asking about a damaged motorcycle at another home, the affidavit adds.
A sheriff’s investigator said in the affidavit that he found Griffin sitting inside his vehicle. Griffin told the investigator that he originally took the four-wheeler to find out who the owner was and that he was trying to help. Griffin had a permit to help at his granddaughter’s home, but it is located more than a half-mile from Patterson’s home,the affidavit says.
Prosecuting Attorney Cody Hiland said he charged two other looting suspects, arrested last week in Vilonia, with misdemeanor theft of property because the wire they were accused of taking wasn’t worth enough to make the action a felony under Arkansas law.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/06/2014