A flash flood warning and a mandatory evacuation of a rural area north of Little Rock was issued Friday morning after a levee along the Arkansas River breached.
Officials say the Dardanelle Levee breached early Friday near the community of Holla Bend, sending water into an already saturated farmland video from CNN showed. At least 75 homes around the region have been affected by the flooding, according to a spokesperson with the Yell County Emergency Management. Officials are urging everyone in the area to evacuate immediately.
The Arkansas River has been steadily rising over the past few days after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released water from a lake near Tulsa, Oklahoma, that had risen thanks to the rain there and in Kansas.
The water is expected to inundate some of the surrounding communities, including the small town of Smiley Bayou where around 500 people live. Dardanelle Mayor Jimmy Witt told residents to be ready for floodwaters to eventually come from the bayou side of the city.
"I ask you to please not panic, we have time to prepare for this," Witt wrote in his post on Facebook.
The amount of rainfall and flooding have created concern among officials thanks to the sheer volume of water being held back by the levees. They have never held back this much water for this long, the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management said on Wednesday.
Arkasnas Gov. Asa Hutchinson took an aerial tour of the flooded areas in his state on Thursday and thanked the men and women in the Arkansas National Guard for the work they were doing.
"As I flew over today, the most significant impression I had is that it's hard to imagine the magnitude of the flooding," Hutchinson told reporters Thursday. "It is hard to comprehend. We have never seen this before, and we have never had to deal with this before."
At least one death has been blamed on the flooding. Officials say a 64-year-old man died on Tuesday after he ignored a barricade at a roadway near Fort Chafee. The man's body was later recovered from a submerged vehicle.
Flooding is expected to continue along the Arkansas River as the water continues to crest on its way downstream until it meets with the Mississippi river.
Photo: Getty Images