Floods Batter Southeast; Rare Snow Blankets Arizona

More than 10 inches of rain flooded hundreds of people out of their homes Friday in Tennessee and Arkansas, while a snowstorm over the Southwest gave Tucson its first white Christmas on record.

West Memphis, Ark., drenched in rain since Thursday, also had been battered Dec. 14 by a tornado that killed six people.

“If you can’t swim good, don’t come to West Memphis,” Red Cross official Rebecca Locke said from Memphis, Tenn. “They’ve really taken it on the chin this month.

“We’re preparing to shelter about 600 people tonight, and a lot of these (evacuees) have somewhere else to go,” Locke said.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton mobilized 25 National Guardsmen to aid in the evacuations at West Memphis, a spokesman said.

Ditches Clogged

The flooding occurred the day after the first disaster relief checks were distributed for tornado victims.

Public Works Director Ward Wimbish said that, although the flooded areas were not the same ones hit by the tornado, debris from that earlier storm had clogged drains and ditches. He said evacuees were housed at the civic center, the same place where tornado victims stayed.

Weather service forecaster Ken Ziegenbein said there was little chance the rain would let up before Sunday.

Flash-flood warnings were issued overnight for 16 counties, and the weather service reported evacuations of homes in Pulaski, Saline, Arkansas and Jefferson counties in central Arkansas.

At Millington, 10 miles north of Memphis, police Sgt. James H. Jones said his best guess was that 400 to 500 people had been evacuated. He said water was five to six feet deep in the streets.

Evacuated by Boat

By mid-morning, 10.26 inches of rain had fallen in the area, the weather service said.

Police dispatcher Brenda Browning said she and her family had to be evacuated by boat when the town suddenly flooded. The water in her house reached six to seven feet deep, she said.

At Marion, “it’s a mess and it looks like it’s going to get worse,” patrolman Gary Kelly said Friday. “We’re supposed to get another 5 inches pretty soon.” Floodwaters stood up to four feet deep.

In Little Rock, Ark., rising water forced 30 transients to evacuate the Union Rescue Mission, where a number of homeless and poor people had received a free Christmas dinner earlier in the day.

“I’m standing in about six inches of water and it’s still rising,” mission director Denis Hamilton said. “This all happened within 30 minutes--boom, it just started flowing in. Thank God we’d already gotten the families fed and finished the Christmas meal.”

Surprise for ‘Snowbirds’

In the desert Southwest, where “snowbirds,” or residents of Northern states, flee to escape winter’s wrath, more than two inches of snow was on the ground at Tucson, with the possibility of several more.

A trace of snow fell in Tucson on Christmas, 1974, but it melted fast, forecasters said. The Arizona city got 1.2 inches of snow on Christmas Eve in 1941, but it melted before morning, records show.

About 80 miles of Interstate 10 between Tucson and Wilcox were closed in both directions Friday morning because of snow and ice, officials said.

Bitterly cold air across the West dragged temperatures down to 38 below zero at Bondurant, Wyo.; 30 below zero at Laramie, Wyo., and 26 below at Harrisburg, Neb.

Record lows included 24 degrees at Astoria, Ore., and 13 below at Scottsbluff, Neb., the weather service said.