Crews Begin Cutting Campus Out of Ice

Workers from the University of Arkansas department of facilities management and contracted tree-trimming companies began cutting paths through the campus on Thursday, Jan. 29, and Friday, Jan. 30, as northwest Arkansas tried to dig out of the ice storm.

Crews began clearing fallen limbs and debris from sidewalks early in the morning Thursday and were still working in the thin light of the early evening on Friday.

Chancellor G. David Gearhart took a second walk through the campus on Thursday to see how repairs were proceeding. Like most Fayetteville homes, the chancellor's residence was without power for a third day, although utility crews for AEP-Southwest Electric Power Co. and Ozark Electric Cooperative had begun restoring power to parts of Fayetteville by late in the day.

Most of the university campus and isolated power grids in Fayetteville did not lose electricity during the ice storm, but power was intentionally shut off for about a half hour Thursday to allow restoration of electricity to the areas of campus that had been affected.

Tree limbs occasionally fell through midday. As the sun came out in the afternoon, ice began melting away from tree limbs and roofs, adding to hazards on campus.

Crystal Favors, a first-year master's student in higher education, stopped to look at the devastation on the front lawn.

"I've never expererienced anything like this," said Favors, who was also seeing snow for the first time.

Favors, who is from Austin, Texas, and lives off-campus, said that she and her roommates lit candles while the power was out. She taught them how to play cards, and they taught her how to play pool. She had already talked with some of her professors, though, and knew that the fun and games would be over when classes resumed.

"We were supposed to write one paper per week, but it looks like we'll have two next week," she said with a grimace.

Classes continued to be cancelled through the end of the week, the first time in the university's 137-year history that classes have been suspended for more than two days in a row because of weather.

In 1918, the start of classes was postponed for nearly two months because of an influenza epidemic that swept Arkansas and the nation. All of Fayetteville was quarantined. At its height, about 235 students suffered from the flu and about a dozen students died.

Because most students lived on campus and most faculty and staff lived in neighborhoods surrounding the campus until the late 1960s, weather rarely interfered with the ability of members of the campus community to get to classes. The rise of more commuter students and the move of faculty and staff to more distant points beginning in the 1950s and 1960s forced University of Arkansas officials to reconsider when the university should remain open.

The university closed for the first time as a result of weather in March 1968 when a late snowstorm dumped more than a foot of snow across most of northwest Arkansas. While traffic was brought to a halt by that storm, it didn't affect availability of power except in isolated incident.

As a result of the 2009 ice storm, emergency-response officials have estimated that nearly 80,000 homes across the northwest corner of Arkansas were without electricity at the depth of the ice storm's damage, and more than 200,000 were believed to be without power across all of northern Arkansas. By Friday, about 40,000 homes in Washington, Benton and Madison counties were still without power.

Many parts of Fayetteville had regained power by Friday, although numerous areas such as the Mount Sequoyah were still without service lines.

Major ice storms in 1978 and in 2000, caused power outages and damage, but paled by comparison to the 2009 storm. Likewise, the university's operations were little affected by those earlier storms because they each occurred over New Year's Day and during the end of finals, respectively.

President Barack Obama signed a federal declaration of disaster on Wednesday, freeing up assistance for homeowners and residents.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe toured the region on Friday, expecting to stop in Fayetteville, Harrison, Mountain Home and Piggott.

Churches, hotels and homeless shelters across the region were used to provide temporary shelter for residents who remained without electricity.

Follow this link to see more photos and video of the ice storm and cleanup.