South of the river: water damage work in Charleston
This town became a county seat in 1901 for one reason: river crossings made it too hard for people on the south side to reach Ozark. That inconvenience has never gone away, and it still governs how a bad week here plays out. Water damage is the only work this line covers in Franklin County, with no fire coverage at all.
Give the address and what you can see. The rest gets worked out at the building.
Water damage is dispatched from this page. Anything the fire department was called out for is outside the coverage here.
A second courthouse, and why
Charleston incorporated on May 22, 1874 and holds 2,588 residents in southwestern Franklin County, about 25 miles east of Fort Smith and adjoining Fort Chaffee. It was designated the county's southern-district seat in 1901 because getting across the Arkansas River to Ozark was a real obstacle for the people who lived down here, and it has its own Franklin County Courthouse, a National Register property.
Arkansas Highway 22 runs through town, 9 miles east to Ratcliff and 24 miles west to Fort Smith, with Highway 217 heading northeast along the Fort Chaffee boundary toward Vesta. Ozark is about 26 miles away by road, and the route crosses the river.
- You callOne number per county. The dispatcher takes the address, the ZIP and a short description of what happened.
- A local crew calls backAn independent restoration contractor already working that county rings you directly and sets a time.
- They look, then scope itNothing is priced from a phone call. The crew walks the building, takes readings, and writes a scope you can hand to your adjuster.
ZIP codes this page dispatches
72933
These are the ZIP codes on the coverage sheet for this county, printed in full so nothing is implied.
The river isolates this town rather than flooding it
In May 2019 the Arkansas crested near Ozark at 374.99 feet, the second-highest reading on record, and stayed above flood stage from May 22 to June 13. The damage in Charleston was not water in the houses. It was the roads. AR-22 closed west of town near Fort Chaffee, the AR-23 bridge in southern Ozark closed as well, and together the two closures split the county in half.
An extra EMS ambulance was stationed here, along with units at Cecil and Webb City, because the north side could no longer reach the south. County Judge Rickey Bowman said the county could not get someone from the south side of Ozark to the hospital in Ozark. For anyone in Charleston needing a contractor during a river flood, that is the honest constraint: not that the water is deep here, but that the crossings are shut. Charleston, 72933, is on the south side of that river, and that is the whole reason the town has a courthouse of its own.
Local background
- Charleston sits south of the Arkansas River in southwestern Franklin County, about 25 miles east of Fort Smith and adjoining Fort Chaffee, and became the county's second seat in 1901 because river crossings made it hard for southern-district residents to reach Ozark; it has its own Franklin County Courthouse (Southern District), a National Register property.
- Arkansas Highway 22 runs through Charleston, leading 9 miles east to Ratcliff and 24 miles west to Fort Smith, while Highway 217 runs northeast through town toward Vesta along the Fort Chaffee boundary.
- A December 2015 flash flood washed out a bridge northwest of Charleston at the intersection of Jetton and Kiene roads (about $100,000 in damage), and an EF1 tornado on May 18, 2019 tracked 4.6 miles along Jetton Road and Highway 217 near town, damaging home roofs and chicken houses.
- During the May 2019 Arkansas River flood, the AR-22 closure west of Charleston near Fort Chaffee combined with the AR-23 bridge closure at Ozark to cut the county in two, so an extra EMS ambulance was stationed in Charleston (along with Cecil and Webb City) to keep the south side covered.
What actually floods buildings here
Farm drainage and washed-out crossings do most of the damage. Heavy rain from the afternoon of December 13 to the early hours of December 14, 2015 washed out a bridge northwest of town at the intersection of Jetton and Kiene roads, with about $100,000 in damage, and no river was involved. Valley-floor soils in the southern district run to the Dardanelle silt loam series, and on flat farmed land a heavy rain spreads out and moves toward the low places rather than concentrating in a channel.
Wind is the other reliable source. On May 18, 2019 an EF1 tornado tracked 4.60 miles at a width of 1,000 yards from 1:13 to 1:19 in the afternoon, uprooting trees and damaging home roofs and chicken houses along Jetton Road and Highway 217 before dissipating east of N. Rattlesnake Road, with damage estimated at $25,000. A poultry house with its roof opened takes on water across a very large footprint, and so does a farmhouse with lifted shingles.
In January 2023 four to ten inches of heavy wet snow fell across the county, snapping limbs onto power lines and causing widespread outages with about $320,000 in property damage. A house without heat in that weather is a burst-pipe call waiting for the thaw.
Water supply, and the ground under it
The City of Charleston runs its own municipal water system, publishes its own annual drinking water quality report and takes water bill payments through the city website. Underground, the picture is thinner than the farmland above it suggests. In 2025 the state spent $50,000 drilling two test wells near a prospective prison site here because existing information on well yields was sparse, and longtime local water-well drillers along with preliminary results both pointed to inadequate groundwater at the site.
That episode has a sequel worth knowing. Arkansas purchased 815 acres in Charleston in 2024 for a planned 3,000-bed state prison, and the water question remained unresolved through late 2025, with Ozark's city council voting not to open talks about supplying it. Whatever comes of that, construction on a scale like that changes drainage patterns on the ground around it, and drainage is what puts water in buildings in this part of the county.
The buildings and the drive
Franklin County counts about 7,845 housing units, 78.0 percent owner-occupied, with a median owner-occupied value of $130,800, a 2019 median household income of $38,923 and a 23.0 percent poverty rate. Practically that means older frame houses, manufactured homes and agricultural outbuildings, and it means the choice between drying a floor and replacing it is a real financial decision rather than a formality. Where a floor can be dried, drying it is usually the right call.
The 584-acre Cherokee Prairie Natural Area, one of the state's last native tallgrass prairie remnants, lies about two miles north of town, a reminder that this is flat, open ground where surface water travels a long way before it finds a low spot. Fort Smith is 24 miles west on AR-22 and Van Buren about 28 by road, which are the practical approaches to Charleston in ordinary weather.
Pages for Charleston
Water Damage Restoration
Every water damage call we route in Charleston.
River Flood Cleanup
River water is Category 3. What that means for what stays and what goes.
Common questions
Does the Arkansas River flood reach Charleston?
Not into the town itself. What a big river event does here is close AR-22 west near Fort Chaffee and the AR-23 bridge at Ozark, which cuts the county in two. The water damage in Charleston during those weeks comes from the same rain, arriving off fields and through washed-out crossings.
My chicken house lost part of its roof. Is that a water job?
It becomes one with the next rain. Poultry houses have enormous roof areas and very little inside to stop water once it is in, so the sequence is to cover the opening properly, get the wet material out and dry what is left. Photograph everything before it is touched.
Are we on city water or a well out here?
Inside town the city runs its own system and publishes its own annual water quality report. Outside it, groundwater in this area has proved thin enough that the state paid $50,000 to drill test wells near the prison site because yields were not well documented. For a wet-building call, the practical question is simply where the shutoff is.
How long is the drive to us if a crew is coming from the north side?
Around 26 miles from Ozark on an ordinary day, and considerably more when the river crossings are closed. That is worth saying up front during a flood rather than discovering it while waiting.
Can this number handle fire damage in Charleston?
No. Franklin County is bought for water damage only, so fire, smoke and soot losses here are outside what can be dispatched. That applies to both county districts and does not change from page to page.
The number at the top of this page is the one that reaches a crew for this county.