HOT SPRINGS, AR – The flood waters are down in Garland County but now we’re seeing first hand the damage from Lake Hamilton with runaway boat docks in and around Hot Springs.
You can hear the force of water rushing just down stream from Blakely Mountain Dam leading into Lake Hamilton. And you can see its strength in this video captured by Dusty Diggs.
“It’s real unusual to get 6 inches of rain in just about 4 hours. That’s quite unusual for around here,” Diggs says/
His video shows the swollen waters around 9am Monday near the flash flood peak, damaging docks all along the shore.
“Debris gets against them and knocked a dock out, hit another dock,” Diggs says. “It was like a domino effect it kept hitting another docks and piling up against them. It was just devastating.”
He walked around a wrecked party barge that tore through one dock on Tuesday afternoon. Diggs, who normally builds docks for his father’s company, Larry Diggs Construction, says the barge owner likely doesn’t know about the flood.
“They’re going to be surprised,” he says.
And their work isn’t done. There are boats somewhere out on Lake Hamilton that have sunk. Diggs says he doesn’t know where those vessels are and it could be a few days before they surface.
He says his crews will assist bringing in stray boats but he’s thankful these torrential rising waters hit when they did.
“I think it is better that it happened in the winter time than in the summer, because if the lake was at full and it rose that much it would be a lot worse than it is now.”
His estimate at all the damage and cleanup is over $1 million.
Larry Diggs construction says they towed in four boats for the Garland County Sheriff’s Department and Entergy but they estimate there could be at least two or three more missing in Lake Hamilton.
You can hear the force of water rushing just down stream from Blakely Mountain Dam leading into Lake Hamilton. And you can see its strength in this video captured by Dusty Diggs.
“It’s real unusual to get 6 inches of rain in just about 4 hours. That’s quite unusual for around here,” Diggs says/
His video shows the swollen waters around 9am Monday near the flash flood peak, damaging docks all along the shore.
“Debris gets against them and knocked a dock out, hit another dock,” Diggs says. “It was like a domino effect it kept hitting another docks and piling up against them. It was just devastating.”
He walked around a wrecked party barge that tore through one dock on Tuesday afternoon. Diggs, who normally builds docks for his father’s company, Larry Diggs Construction, says the barge owner likely doesn’t know about the flood.
“They’re going to be surprised,” he says.
And their work isn’t done. There are boats somewhere out on Lake Hamilton that have sunk. Diggs says he doesn’t know where those vessels are and it could be a few days before they surface.
He says his crews will assist bringing in stray boats but he’s thankful these torrential rising waters hit when they did.
“I think it is better that it happened in the winter time than in the summer, because if the lake was at full and it rose that much it would be a lot worse than it is now.”
His estimate at all the damage and cleanup is over $1 million.
Larry Diggs construction says they towed in four boats for the Garland County Sheriff’s Department and Entergy but they estimate there could be at least two or three more missing in Lake Hamilton.
