Local family survives flood

By Ginnie Tyson

An Atkins mother spent six hours in a tree during the north Arkansas floods a week ago, not knowing the fate of her children.

A mile or two from where 16-year-old Sharp County teenager Chris Allen Bodkins lost his life trying to save his mother and sisters during Friday night, Sept 22, a Pope County family battled the same rapidly-rising waters of Martin Creek.

Like the Bodkins family, Tammy Hubbard spent about six hours in a tree that night, wet and cold and exhausted, straddling a tree branch in the pitch black. As daylight came, she was too far away to see if her children were all right.

"The worst thing was not knowing what was happening to the children," Tammy said. Her two children, Taylor, 15, and Payton, 8, and Payton's friend Savanna Sims (daughter of Jessica Wiliker of Atkins) clung to a tree about a half-mile up-stream from her.

Tammy and husband Phillip had traveled separately to their beloved cabin on acreage at Williford on Martin Creek near Hardy. Phillip had gone earlier and stopped at the home of friends, Doug and Judy Cotter, where rising waters prevented him from reaching the cabin. When Tammy finished her job at Tina's Cut and Curl in Atkins, she left about 8 p.m. with the children.

She said she didn't feel very concerned by the rainy weather, and when Phillip called and told her to stop and get a motel, she thought she could make it to the cabin safely. They did make it to the cabin with the help of a neighbor with 4-wheel drive when her car wouldn't navigate the last bit of muddy road. It was 11 p.m. when they arrived.

"I know now why I couldn't go to sleep," Tammy said. And at 3 a.m. water began to come into the cabin. Her cell phone luckily had a signal long enough for her to call 9-1-1, but before the signal was lost the operator told her conditions were such that rescue workers would have a very hard time reaching her and the children.

The Associated Press said more than 10 inches of rain fell there in that day-and-a-half period.

Tammy remembered stories of cabins being washed from their foundations in another storm, and with water rising in the cabin they took a flashlight (which they later lost) and a cell phone and found a tree to hang onto.

The two girls climbed up into the branches and Tammy and 6-foot-two Taylor hugged the bottom of the tree. The water was rising fast. "It rose from my knees to my waist in five minutes," Tammy said. Before the ordeal was over, the water reached Taylor's neck.

Tammy was on the up-stream side of the tree, where debris was hitting her, and finally she felt she couldn't hold on. Afraid her son would try to follow and try to save her, she told him to stay there. She went under water and came back up. "Take care of the girls," she called. "I'll get another tree."

"I could only see how fast I was moving when the lightning flashed," she said. About a half mile downstream and after going under more times, ("I thought I was going to drown," she said.) she "smacked into a tree branch," grabbed it and managed to pull herself to the middle of the tree and straddle a branch. She pictured herself, there in the dark, to be on the lower branches of a tree but later found she had been about 15 feet up. She and the children had no idea what was happening to each other.

In the light of morning (about 8:45) when Jack Boren found her, Tammy's question was, "Are my kids okay?" As the water has receded, the children had already been found and taken to neighbors' house. Now, as two men stretched a rope from bank to bank, Calvin Hale (a friend) hung onto the rope to reach Tammy. "I jumped and he got me to shore," she said. "When he got me to shore I said, 'Oh, I love you. If I wasn't married I'd propose right now!'" She said as daylight came, she had begun screaming for help.

"Taylor and Payton and Savanna were very brave for holding on in the water for those six hours," Tammy said.

Phillip said he slept at the Cotter's house, isolated by water and having escaped a nearby tornado, but sure his family members were safe at the cabin. "It's the highest point on that spot," he said. He was wakened at 7:30 a.m. Saturday by his friends telling him that people were working to rescue his family. One friend let it slip that Tammy was in a tree, Phillip said, "and that was when I tried to leave. Doug Cotter blocked the road with his vehicle to keep me from leaving." There was no way out of there until water receded. A phone call came from "a lady in Texas telling me she was talking to my wife on the phone." Tammy had been taken to the neighbor's house, where the phone service was out but somehow they had wireless internet.

When the water went down enough for Phillip to reach them, he was hugging everyone and "crying like a baby," he said. He quoted Payton: "I was brave, Daddy. . . . It was a little scarey. But then it was kind of fun after a while." Phillip credits Taylor with keeping the girls safely in the tree for that long time: "He kept them singing and happy and stuff." Phillip said, "I'm really proud of that boy. . . . It was the first time he saw his daddy cry."

Phillip, who ended up with pneumonia from being wet for two days and lifting trees out of the way, said when they could reach the cabin on Sunday, the water line the flood made on the cabin was 11 feet off the ground. Everything inside had been mangled. The refrigerator was lying on its door. Phillip was able to get to the cabin. He put his three pairs of boots on the porch railing to dry out. Tammy got her purse and jewelry, and they went to the Cotters' house to rest. The flood left some valuables unharmed because they had been placed high up.

When they approached the cabin Monday, Phillip noticed the boots were not there on the rail, and inside the cabin they found the furniture that was not already destroyed was broken up. Chairs from Tammy's grandfather were deliberately smashed. An estimated $5,000 worth of stuff had been taken, including the laptop computer. "That's bad, kicking people when they are down," Phillips said.

They don't know whether they can restore the cabin.

Tammy said, "I keep thinking about those victims of Katrina, trapped on their roofs for days."

Phillip described being separated from his family and knowing they were in danger, "I can't even describe the feeling. I have never felt like that. It was just like a bad dream."

"It was only by the hand of God that we even made it out of there," Tammy said. "It was just God," she repeated.

"From now on, we will always travel together," Phillip said.