LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — First, the rising water forced Jeffen Roddy to abandon her home in the eastern Arkansas town of Biscoe. She plucked photos off her walls, shoved them into boxes and headed to stay with her cousin.
Then, the effects of the flooding followed Roddy to work. The latest wave of high water forced highway officials to shut down a busy stretch of Interstate 40 that feeds truckers to Craig's Bros. CafÉ, where she waits tables part-time.
"There's no big trucks coming in and out of here," Roddy said from an empty restaurant in De Valls Bluff on Friday. "We don't have one customer."
Since the interstate closed for 23 miles between Hazen and Brinkley on Thursday, people like Roddy who live or work in the middle have been stuck. They can't get here, there or anywhere from this no man's land below the traffic barricades.
"It's bad for business when the roads are closed," said Roddy, 57.
But forecasts for the rising rivers don't provide much relief and officials expect the interstate to remain closed over the weekend.
Cars and trucks traveling from Little Rock to Memphis and vice versa are redirected down country highways not accustomed to tractor trailers. While eastbound cars are diverted a couple dozen miles out of the way to Highways 63 and 79, eastbound trucks have to detour down toward the Louisiana border to make it north to Memphis, Tenn.
"(Highway 79) would be destroyed by the end of the weekend," said Glenn Bolick, the spokesman for the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department. "We cannot put trucks on that roadway."
So, faced with hours of delays in Arkansas, some trucking companies are rerouting their shipments elsewhere — some through Missouri and others in Louisiana, says Lane Kidd, the president of the Arkansas Trucking Association.
In Hazen, where eastbound travelers have to exit the interstate and detour near the Hurley House CafÉ, Joey Hurley cooked chicken strips and catfish as trucks and cars passed by. But because Hurley's parents' restaurant is at the intersection of two highways, not much of the extra traffic is coming their way.
"We're going to get 15,000 cars that come through here and (we can) just look at them," he said.
In fact, save for thirsty policemen setting up the detours, Hurley said the influx of drivers and traffic cones might even be hurting business among the locals.
"It's harder to get here than it would be normally," Hurley said.
Gov. Mike Beebe, who flew over the barren stretch of I-40 in between his trip to visit the Mississippi River Levee at West Memphis, said the extra traffic is wreaking havoc on nearby communities.
"It's the first time an interstate has been shut down in Arkansas because of flooding," Beebe told reporters Friday. "It's significant."
The White River has been breaking water-level records for days, pushed by heavy rains and a backup along the Mississippi River. At Des Arc, just north of the interstate, the river hit 39.38 feet Friday evening — about two feet above the previous record. The river isn't expected to crest there until Saturday.
For Roddy, the rising White isn't the first river to chase her away from home. When she was about six years old, she said, floods forced her family to flee from Mississippi to Arkansas.
She's lived in Biscoe for just over a half-century — more than two decades of that time in the mobile home where she and her granddaughters packed up photos, clothes and medications on Monday.
"The first picture I got down was my momma's," Roddy said.
Then, she scooped up pictures of her daughter, Alice Robinson, who died from diabetes a little over a year ago. A few more photos of other relatives ended up in two cardboard boxes.
She left the rest of her belongings in Biscoe, where she suspects floodwaters are creeping up toward her home.
"I can replace the furniture," she said. "But I couldn't replace those pictures."
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Associated Press reporter Sarah Eddington contributed to this report.