When the wind makes the hole and the rain does the rest
Storm losses in this city almost always arrive in two stages. Something opens the building — a roof edge, a window, a section of decking — and then the water finds it, sometimes hours later and sometimes on a separate day. Handling the second stage well is what decides whether the ceiling comes down or dries.
The number below is the one for this county. Others on the site route elsewhere.
The 1987 sequence, and why it is still the model
A tornado touched down southwest of the city at 9:40 p.m. on December 14, 1987 and cut northeast through West Memphis on a path as wide as 300 feet before crossing into Tennessee about two miles later. Six people were killed, 235 homes and 153 apartments in three complexes were destroyed, 35 businesses and Maddux Elementary School were leveled, and 1,500 people were left without housing. The county was declared a federal disaster area on December 17.
Then came December 25. Twelve inches of rain fell on a city whose roofs had been torn open eleven days earlier, and it compounded damage that had already been counted. That is the local lesson worth keeping: the interval between the wind and the water is when a building is either covered or lost. Damp insulation and a saturated ceiling assembly do not recover on their own.
- 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 covered here
72301
The ZIP is what the dispatcher checks first, so it is worth having ready.
First steps that actually matter
Cover the opening before anything else. A properly fastened tarp or a temporary deck patch stops the source, and every hour of continued entry adds material to the removal list. Once the building is closed, standing water comes out, wet ceiling material and saturated batt insulation come down, and the assembly is opened enough to get air into it.
Rain that enters through a storm-damaged roof is not clean water by the time it reaches a living space. It has passed through shingles, felt, decking, dust and often insulation, and it usually carries roofing debris with it. Wet fiberglass batts are removed rather than dried. Solid framing and decking are cleaned, dried and kept whenever readings support it, which they often do if the building was covered quickly.
What makes this place different
- The city, incorporated in 1927, was again inundated by the major Mississippi River floods of 1927 and 1937 as the St. Francis Levee District's system (created 1893) was built out.
- A tornado touched down southwest of the city at 9:40 p.m. on December 14, 1987 and cut a path up to 300 feet wide through West Memphis before crossing into Tennessee, killing 6, destroying 235 homes and 153 apartments, leveling 35 businesses and Maddux Elementary School, and leaving 1,500 people homeless; eleven days later, on December 25, 1987, twelve inches of rain compounded the damage.
- The city's first Mississippi River bridge opened May 12, 1892, the Harahan rail/road bridge opened in 1916, and the six-lane Hernando de Soto Bridge carrying I-40 opened in 1972.
Flat ground works against you afterward
Once water is inside a building here, gravity is not much help. West Memphis sits about eleven feet above the Mississippi on more than a hundred feet of river sediment, with heavy clay soil that holds surface water in yards and parking lots long after the rain stops. Drainage is engineered rather than natural, so water pooled against a slab does not simply run away downhill.
That affects the drying plan. Outside air here is often too humid to be useful for ventilation, so drying is done with closed doors and windows and mechanical dehumidification instead of the open-it-up approach that works in drier country. It also affects the roof repair order: a temporary cover that sheds well beats a partial permanent repair that leaves a seam, because the next storm system is frequently only days out.
Questions and answers
Should I wait for the adjuster before covering the roof?
No. Preventing further damage is normally expected of a property owner, and photographs of the opening taken before the tarp goes on preserve the record. Waiting several days with a hole in the roof creates damage that is much harder to attribute to the storm.
The ceiling is stained but not sagging. Does it have to come out?
Not always. A stained but firm ceiling with dry insulation above it can sometimes be dried and repainted. A sagging ceiling, a wet blanket of insulation above it, or a taped seam that has opened means the material is coming down, and it is safer to take it down deliberately than to wait for it.
Is storm water treated as contaminated?
Rain that came through a damaged roof is treated as at least moderately contaminated, and water that crossed the ground before entering is treated as grossly contaminated. Both change what gets removed rather than merely dried.
How soon after a tornado can a crew get to me?
After a large storm every crew in the region is committed at once, so scheduling is honest rather than instant. Board-up and roof covering are usually reachable first because they take less time per building, with drying and repair following as capacity frees up.
Nearby towns on this line
Related pages
If the building is wet or smoke-damaged now, calling beats reading.