On the afternoon of March 31, 2023, I sat at my desk while sirens blared a warning that a tornado had been spotted. For their safety, my employees were sent to the first floor of FlagandBanner to hunker down in the center hall. Watching out my second-story window, I scouted for possible approaching tornadoes.
When it was all over, we learned of the devastation. An F3, super-cell tornado bounced, hovered atop, and wreaked havoc in a 30-mile swath across Central Arkansas.
A Personal Path of Destruction
First, it touched down in West Little Rock, ripping the roof off Ms. Rebecca’s ballet studio, Arkansas Ballet Academy, where I take classes. It continued down the street to the Ballroom on Shackleford, Richard Davis’s studio (Richard is a super-volunteer of the Friend of Dreamland (FOD). He is also entrenched in our local dance community and each year he fills our Dancing Into Dreamland (DID) roster with exceptional talent).
After leaving the Breckinridge area of Little Rock, the super cell turned up Old Forge Road on its way to Reservoir Park. The trees in the once-beautiful forest were snapped and splintered in such a way that the park now looks like a forest of giant toothpicks.
Once up on Cantrell Road, the F3 blew out windows at the strip mall of my hair stylist Nancy’s salon, Studio 2121, destroyed the building of my long-time financial planner, and trashed the nearby apartment complex where a friend of my husband lives with his aging mother.
Onward “the ruiner” climbed; up the ridge to the Heights’ neighborhood, uprooting 100-year-old trees, one of which fell on the house of another friend.
Before leaving Pulaski County, the tornado crossed the Arkansas River to North Little Rock. Soon after, I received a text from my housekeeper, complete with pics. Her house had two trees through its roof. The next day her husband and their home made the front page of the newspaper.
We Were Lucky
As the news spread across America of the devastation, I received texts from friends far and wide asking if we were okay. Surprisingly, no one I knew was hurt. Not one death in the Little Rock area but Wynne, Arkansas, a small town at the end of the tornado’s path, was not so lucky. At last count Wynne had five fatalities.
It is a weird thing to say…. but we went to bed that night feeling lucky.
Drama Continued
As you can imagine, after such a dramatic afternoon, the devastation and power outages were widespread. People were displaced and emergency personnel and hospitals were overworked.
Though downtown Little Rock was spared the wrath of the tornado, Flag And Banner’s (FAB) own personal drama was afoot.
At 5 AM, my husband got a call from our security alarm company. Someone had randomly thrown a Molotov cocktail through the front window of FAB and our historically significant, 120-year-old building was on fire.
This is when you love your first responders. The police and fire department beat my husband to the scene and with a fire extinguisher put out the blaze.
Eating my Words
Last year, after installing our new elevator to make the Dreamland Ballroom ADA compliant, FAB was required to install smoke and fire alarms throughout the building. It was expensive and I shamelessly complained. Today, I want to eat my words. That $35k expense was the best money I ever spent. It saved our building, our jobs, and our livelihoods.
The speed at which the fire spread was remarkable. It appears the arson threw an accelerator into a rubber trashcan by the register. Rubber burns hot and in no time was climbing the walls to other petroleum-based products in our store. Plastic is everywhere in our lives. Weirdly, the pile of tissue paper on the checkout counter hardly burned at all.
Be Watching for Our Upcoming Fire Sale
The smell of smoke is astoundingly powerful, and the cleanup is daunting. By many standards, our fire was small and was extinguished quickly, but I learned that doesn’t necessarily mean the aftereffects are small.
At first glance, the overall store and its products look fine, until you do the white glove test. For the next week we will be repairing the construction damage and cleaning up a thin layer of soot that lays upon everything in the showroom and in my office, above.
Again, it is a weird thing to say… but we went to bed again that night feeling somewhat lucky.
