A National Guard helicopter drops water on the Bunker fire in Calhoun County on Wednesday, Sept. 16. Photo: Arkansas National Guard
Crews worked through the weekend to extinguish hot spots from a wildfire near a Camden industrial park where several military contractors are located.
As of Friday night, the Arkansas Department of Agriculture reported the Bunker Fire was 75% contained after burning more than 2,800 acres.
State and federal resources were called in to battle the blaze, which began Monday near Highland Industrial Park.
Arkansas National Guard helicopters have been used to drop thousands of gallons of water at a time on the fire. Additional support from National Guard crews from Oklahoma and Mississippi continued through the weekend. The out-of-state crews were expected to remain through Monday.
Camden Municipal Airport reported Saturday night that 59 bucket drops had been completed that day, delivering an estimated 83,200 gallons of water. On Friday, 97 drops were made, dumping more than 100,000 gallons of water.
Crews have worked long hours since the fire began, often through the night. Beginning Tuesday, bulldozers were used to create firebreaks around the blaze, removing dry vegetation that could fuel the fire.
“A fire break, essentially, is putting a gap in between one section of the forest and the other,” Arkansas National Guard Staff Sgt. Christian Clark said in a video statement on Wednesday. “The fuel is anything that can burn all the dry leaves, all the pine needles, the trees. So you’re just trying to push up everything, and just leaving exposed dirt, get rid of all the roots, and trying to stop [the fire] from being able to jump.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency approved a Fire Management Assistance Grant for the Bunker Fire. Such grants can reimburse eligible firefighting costs, including expenses for personnel, equipment and supplies. Calhoun and Ouachita counties were designated for assistance.
No injuries or property damage have been reported.
On Friday, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that $750,000 from the Governor’s Disaster Response and Recovery Fund would be available to the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management for the state’s response to wildfires.
The entire state remained at high wildfire danger as of Sunday, with dry conditions allowing fires to ignite easily and spread quickly. Burn bans were in place in 70 of the state’s 75 counties, including every county in the southern half of Arkansas.
While this isn’t a great quality image, just a photo of a photo that was displayed at Bob Gay’s funeral, it shows him on the air at an unknown radio station.
I’m pleased to share two recently digitized airchecks of Bob Gay from 1972, when he was the evening DJ at WCBM-AM 680 in Baltimore. Sixteen years later, he would become my high school radio teacher in Little Rock, giving his students real-world instruction on how to develop the skills needed to work in radio and land their first jobs.
Bob was a native of Newport, Arkansas, and went by Bob Galen on the air. He had a lengthy career in broadcasting, working at radio and television stations around the country. Fittingly, he encouraged his students at Metropolitan Vocational Education Center, part of the Little Rock School District, not to limit their careers by staying in one market, but to look for opportunities wherever they could find them.
After starting his career in his hometown, Bob worked at stations in Little Rock, Memphis, Marion, Alabama, and Burlington, North Carolina. In the early 1970s, he was hired at Baltimore’s WCBM, then one of the city’s top-rated stations. Owned by Metromedia, WCBM featured personality-driven DJs playing a middle-of-the-road format that mixed current hits with oldies. The station also had a strong local news presence.
Earlier this summer, I spent a couple of Sundays with Bob’s son, Russell Gay, whom I met at Bob’s funeral in 2024. I wrote about Bob and his influence on me shortly after his death. Russell has kept his dad’s reel-to-reel tape machine in working order, and together we digitized some of Bob’s old tapes, including these two recordings.
One reel contained a scoped aircheck that was edited into a demo tape featuring highlights of a WCBM airshift. Russell said his dad was constantly sending tapes to program directors at other stations, always looking for his next opportunity. The other is an unscoped hour of Bob, beginning around 6 p.m. during a WCBM local newscast. After the newscast, there’s an awkwad bit of interplay between Bob and the anchor before he launches into his evening shift. Commercials, jingles and full songs make this recording especially fun to hear.
AUDIO: A scoped aircheck of Bob Galen, likely from October 1972 on WCBM-AM 680 in Baltimore. DOWNLOAD
AUDIO: An hour-long unscoped aircheck of Bob Galen on WCBM Sept. 27, 1972. This includes a local newscast, traffic report, commercials and other elements. DOWNLOAD
The booming voice, the constant wisecracks, the interplay with the jingles, the way he asks listeners, “How the heck are you?” — it was a different era of radio. These recordings, particularly the full hour, are a wonderful time capsule of what personality-driven AM radio sounded like more than half a century ago.
There’s also a personal connection that makes hearing these recordings meaningful to me.
One day in my radio class in 1988, Bob played us a tape of himself on WCBM. The sound of that recording has been bouncing around in my head ever since. I’m grateful to Russell for finding these tapes all these years later and allowing me to digitize and share them.
Digitizing one of the reels of Bob Galen on WCBM on June 14, 2026.
Last year, Russell also gave me several cassettes from his dad’s collection, including recordings of a couple of Little Rock stations that I’ve previously posted here. Among them were three hours of KARN-AM 920 from 1977 and a 90-minute recording of R&B station KOKY-AM 1440 from 1975.
It’s a joy to be able to preserve recordings like these before the aging tapes deteriorate further, and to share them online so others can enjoy hearing what radio was once like.
I’m always looking for opportunities to report on historic preservation. This story for The Glenwood Herald was fun for me because it detailed what some Arkansas cities are doing to revitalize their downtown areas.
Ki Hartsfield speaks to city leaders who came together in Glenwood on Friday, Aug. 14. All photos: Michael Hibblen
Leaders of small Arkansas cities have long faced many of the same challenges: how to help their communities prosper amid declining populations and deteriorating infrastructure. A core group is now sharing ideas and hoping to, as they openly put it, “rip off and duplicate” what is working elsewhere.
The group gets together every month or two in different cities to discuss strategies and network. The latest gathering was Friday, Aug. 14, when nearly two dozen mayors, chamber members and others came to Glenwood to discuss and see firsthand what has worked locally, particularly efforts to rejuvenate what had been a mostly abandoned downtown. Cities represented included Malvern, Waldron, Leslie, Keo, McNeil, Fordyce, De Queen and Amity.
The group assembled at Mercantile on Broadway, the shop owned and operated by Ki and Kayla Hartsfield, who have been active over the past three years investing in properties, organizing community events and bringing new life to downtown.
“We want to give you a scope of what that looks like, how that came to be, the lessons learned, the hurdles faced,” said Ki Hartsfield, executive vice president of commercial lending at Southern Bancorp. “The truth is, we don’t know what we’re doing, and I hope that’s an empowering statement.”
“We’ve had tons of successes. It’s easy to share the story now because we can show you success. It was harder two years ago because it did not look good,” he said.
The core message of the day, Hartsfield said, was for cities to realize that “help is not coming. There’s no blueprint, there’s no guide, there’s no master plan,” he said. “Just doing something is the key.”
REVITALIZING DOWNTOWN GLENWOOD
Kayla Hartsfield, president of the Glenwood Regional Chamber of Commerce, recalled attending a town hall meeting with about 20 people in January 2023. There was discussion about community needs, such as a sports complex and splash pad, before the conversation eventually turned to vacant buildings downtown. Questions were raised about who owned the buildings and what it would take to restore them.
“I realized there were more people than just us who wanted to see these buildings brought back to life, who wanted to see businesses downtown,” she said.
At the time, 60% of the buildings in downtown Glenwood were empty, Ki Hartsfield said.
“Not just vacant, but dilapidated, leaking, more mice than people — it was in bad shape,” he said. “So, obviously, working in Glenwood, driving through it day in and day out, I thought, man, let’s put our money where our mouth is.”
The couple began researching who owned the buildings and found that some could be purchased relatively cheaply. But they soon realized they couldn’t tackle the effort alone. Conversations with other like-minded young professionals eventually led to the formation of an investment group made up of six couples.
During a tour of buildings in downtown Glenwood, the group went through a former shoe store that is being cleaned out and will become a shop that sells homemade soaps.
Since then, Hartsfield said, $1.8 million in private capital has been invested in the two-block downtown area. He said he warned the other investors from the beginning that their investments might feel more like donations.
“We have to put purpose over profits, and that’s hard for people to digest. The reason Glenwood hadn’t been flipped is because it doesn’t make sense on paper,” he told the group.
“There has been a change in society where people want character in buildings. People want experience, right? The bypass and strip malls — no offense to those, but they’re kind of out,” Hartsfield said. “You have to look at it from another lens, because if it worked on paper, someone else would have done it.”
The municipal leaders were led on a walking tour of downtown, visiting five local businesses now operating in restored buildings. The final stop highlighted one of the biggest challenges still facing the investors: the historic Alford building. Efforts are continuing to find a tenant or tenants for the two-story, 8,000-square-foot building. Prospective tenants have toured the property, but so far none has worked out.
NETWORKING
Many of the city leaders also discussed how they came to serve their communities.
De Queen City Council member Rick Pruitt told the group that despite being born and raised there, he couldn’t wait to leave when he became an adult.
“I left De Queen in 1983 as a little punk rocker, shaking my fist saying, I’ll never come back. And then I moved back, because I wanted my daughter to climb the same trees as I did,” Pruitt said. “I’m so glad I did.”
Several participants told similar stories of leaving their communities for college or to pursue other opportunities, only to eventually return with a desire to improve their hometowns.
Three representatives of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission also attended, including Dana Poindexter, regional manager for southwest Arkansas. Poindexter first introduced Kayla Hartsfield to Keo Mayor Stephanie White, who has been organizing the regular gatherings of municipal leaders.
“You never know who’s going to be an asset for you. So constantly look for those people,” Ki Hartsfield said.
White said it was encouraging to see what has been accomplished in Glenwood.
“I think that all small towns, with our few resources and few people, it just takes committed folks to start somewhere and make an effort,” White said. “It’s infectious and it’s contagious. People want to see progress and be a part of something successful.”
The group walked through the Alford building, which was built around 1915 and is Glenwood’s most historic building.
Visitors go through the second floor of the Alford building, which was originally a hotel.
Leslie Mayor Eric Jaeger and his wife, Mary Jaeger, president of the Leslie Merchants Association, previously welcomed many of the same leaders to their city. Like the Hartsfields, the Jaegers also operate a local store.
Mary Jaeger said one aspect of Glenwood’s revitalization that stood out was its ability to form an investment group.
“We have a couple of open buildings, but having people that are willing to take that risk to develop downtown, it’s hard. It’s very hard,” she said.
Jaeger also stressed the importance of festivals in drawing visitors into small communities. Glenwood is preparing for its biggest annual event, the Caddo River Festival over Labor Day weekend, while Leslie is preparing for its Whittlin’ and Fiddlin’ Festival on Sept. 19.
“It’s bringing a part of our heritage of having the whittlers line the downtown. The gentlemen would sit and whittle, and I think that was their old-school Facebook. They’d be able to talk about what’s happening,” Jaeger said. “So having festivals is what has allowed us to even open up more, to bring people in and show them what kind of a gem we have in Leslie.”
Finding people willing to take leadership roles within their communities was another recurring theme.
In addition to her role with the chamber, Kayla Hartsfield serves as president of the board of directors for the nonprofit Glenwood Downtown Network, which is part of Main Street Arkansas. Two fellow board members, Jimmy Kennedy and Kara Oosterhous, also attended the gathering. Hartsfield stressed the importance of their roles in the organization and said she was grateful to have met people willing to become involved.
After spending the morning talking and touring downtown Glenwood, the group picked up sandwiches and headed to a cabin along the Caddo River, one of about two dozen short-term rentals providing overnight accommodations for visitors.
There, Waldron City Council member David Carter said he saw similarities between his community and Glenwood.
“We have the same goal to grow, be sustainable, have a better life and retain our young people,” Carter said. “So it’s encouraging to see that this right here, just this stretch, is amazing. The old buildings, the way they’ve retained the historical look, the original brick and that feel, because we have that in Waldron. We have all the historic buildings. It’s just getting the people together and moving towards that common goal.”
This is the online home of Michael Hibblen, managing editor of Newsroom Ventures, which publishes six Arkansas newspapers. I've worked as a reporter, editor and manager for newspapers, radio and TV stations for more than three decades, with this website telling the story of my career. Also featured are outside interests I've researched. The views expressed here are my own and might not reflect those of my employers.
Released by Arcadia Publishing in 2017, Rock Island Railroad in Arkansas delves into the history of the railroad, which once had a huge footprint in Arkansas. The book features historic photos and tells the story of the Rock Island, which was shut down in March 1980. READ MORE ABOUT MY BOOK.
Preserving Rock Island Depot at Perry
Since 2017, I've been part of a group working to preserve the former Rock Island Depot at Perry, Arkansas. To keep it from being demolished, we raised money to move the depot to an adjacent lot, still alongside the tracks, which is now owned by the city. The building has since been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and our group has become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. LEARN MORE.
For 13 years, from May 2009 to December 2022, I worked for NPR station KUAR-FM 89.1 at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. That included 10 years as News Director while continuing to anchor and report. You can read and hear reports from that time on Little Rock Public Radio's website.
