Stephen Thornton for The New York Times  Russell Petty, left, with his friend William Saul, hired an excavator last month to dig a moat and pile the dirt to form a levee around his home in DeValls Bluff, Ark.  DeVALLS BLUFF, Ark. — Muddy children stood in a human chain, passing sandbags to others who were two, three or four times their age. One volunteer was an exchange student from the Czech Republic. One man was in his 70s. Coolers of food, drinks and ice appeared, and no one knew where they had come from.  Floods were drowning huge parts of the Midwest and the South, but the residents of Prairie County had decided that Russell Petty’s house, at least, would stay dry — even if they needed flat-bottom boats to get to it.  They fortified a moat and a levee, protective rings around the three-acre property that, once the nearby White River had crested, left Mr. Petty’s house out of harm’s way, like a castle in the English countryside. It stands as a symbol of one minor victory over the elements in a region suffering widespread hardships from tornadoes and floods.  “I don’t think he wanted to put other people in the position of having to help him that way,” said William Saul, a friend of Mr. Petty’s. “He just didn’t have a choice.”  The White River begins in northwest Arkansas, passes through eight dams and picks up tributaries from the Ozarks and the Arkansas Delta, a part of the state battered by storms this spring. As the river reaches DeValls Bluff, population 783, it enters the Grand Prairie, an ecosystem that was once an expansive tallgrass prairie but has been replaced with rice fields that require networks of ditches, canals and irrigation pumps. It is a place where humans decide where water should flow over the land.  The effort to save the three-bedroom house began late last month when Mr. Petty, an auto mechanic with no flood insurance, hired an excavator to dig a moat and pile the earth on the outside rim to form a levee.  The rain kept falling and the nearby White River kept rising. His neighbor’s homes were flooded, and a mandatory evacuation was ordered for the county.  On May 3, Mr. Petty, 50, called Mr. Saul, 36, to take a look at the levee. They agreed that it probably would not hold. Mr. Saul got a backhoe from his farm to move more dirt and raise the levee walls, and later James and Margie Saul, his parents, came by with a trackhoe to further bolster the levee.  “This is a matter of too much rain, too quick,” the elder Mr. Saul said. “This river is like the weather — you might not like it, but you just got to take it.”  The forecast called for more rain. Mr. Petty thought about giving up.  While he was working on the levee, about 100 people arrived and cleared Mr. Petty’s house of all belongings. He had not asked them to. It just happened. He said he did not even know who some of them were. His wife, Cheryl, stayed with her parents at night, and both of his adult sons came over to help.  The water covered his driveway and the road in front of his house. Canopies of trees jutted out of the waterscape and created a jungle-like maze. A half-mile up the submerged road, dump trucks piled sand on dry ground and Mr. Petty’s friends bagged sand and loaded the bags into the johnboats to be transferred to the levee.  When night fell and neighbors departed, there was Mr. Petty alone, sleeping in an empty bedroom on lawn chair cushions with a blanket, pillow and a life jacket.  He had to man the tractor that powered the water pump that sucked water out of the moat and shot it over the levee. If the tractor ran out of diesel, the pump would fail and the water would surge into his home.  At 3 p.m. last Saturday, the river crested at DeValls Bluff at 36.10 feet. The highest on record was 34.60 feet, in 1927. Mr. Petty’s house, storage buildings and garage remained intact and dry. The moat still holds muddy water, his driveway is shin-deep and the land surrounding his home looks like a battlefield where trench warfare was fought in a rainstorm.  He says he is not sure how he is going to re-landscape his acreage.  “I haven’t got that far yet,” Mr. Petty said as he tried to catch up on work at his auto shop. He said he felt indebted to all of the stubborn volunteers who had helped him save his home. “I overworked a lot of good men. It was hard and humbling.”  Mr. Petty eats lunch these days at the old DeValls Bluff school gymnasium. The school system closed in 2006 because of declining enrollment, and it consolidated with another school. The gym now serves as a cafeteria for those who have lost their homes and others in need.  The basketball court still holds an immaculate sheen, and under those years of wax and polish it reads:
Family, friends and even strangers helped an Arkansas man protect his home from a cresting river using a moat and sandbags.