At Least 16 Campers Killed in Arkansas Flash Flood

June 11, 2010— -- At least 16 people, including some children, were killed Friday after flash floods swept through their remote Arkansas campsites following a heavy rain, according to Gov. Mike Beebe.

About 60 campers were rescued by emergency workers, another two dozen hospitalized, the Associated Press reported, citing authorities. Dozens more are still missing and feared dead.

"About one-thirty, two in the morning, we started hearing children and women screaming and crying," said Crystel Hofer, who was asleep in her cabin when the water came raging through. "So we went to the door and opened the door and they were trying to come up the hill to where our cabin was to escape the rising water."

"It's a terrible tragedy and we're doing all we can to hopefully find some folks and bring some people back who are stranded out there," said Matt DeCample, spokesman for Gov. Beebe. "We've got a lot of state and local folks pulling together. This is an unprecedented tragedy out in this part of the state. It's a very rural but close-knit portion of Arkansas."

The area is still heavily flooded and searches are expected to take at least two days.

The Caddo and Little Missouri rivers -- two normally gentle waterways -- rose by 20 feet overnight, engulfing the hikers and campers who were spending the night in tents along the rivers in the isolated Ouachita Mountains.

"Within ten minutes the water had rose and campers were floating down," Hofer told ABC News. "If they didn't get out of their camper within five, ten minutes, they weren't getting out."

The 54-unit campground was quickly inundated with water, which was rising as quickly as 8 feet per hour. The water was so violent it overturned RVs and peeled asphalt off the roads.

"There was a lot of devastation in there, where it's coming along this river, there's vehicles that's overturned, there's cabins washed off their foundations," said Capt. Mike Fletcher of the Arkansas State Police Department.