man, western Virginia is notorious for devastating flash flooding....especially against the Eastern slope of the Blue Ridge mountains. Read a book a few years back called “the roar of the heavens”...about how the remnants of Hurricane Camille, 3 days after landfall in Mississippi, stalled over Nelson County Virginia in 1969... and dumped what meteorologist’s say was the most rainfall that was probably “theoretically possible” in 6 hour period. The official total was 27 inches...some totals were 31 inches, over a narrow band in Nelson County only. To this day they dont quite understand exactly what happened that night..only that the remnant of Camille got trapped against the eastern slope of the mountains, stalled, and literally set up a “rain making machine” that just kept regenerating over and over a small area. 160 people were killed in the flooding in Nelson County, more than died at the landfall in Mississippi. Entire slopes just dissolved into raging mudslides...boulders, trees, bridges, houses,etc kept “damming” up, only to explode further downstream....to this day, there are still scars on the mountain sides that are visible.....Camille was a beast....
We were on a road trip across the country and driving through West Virginia on a secondary highway. Figured there would be a diner or place to eat where the sign pointed to some town.
We got onto the smaller road and there was a semi and a few cars off to the side of the road all smashed. I thought that was odd, but...
Went a bit further and got to where the “town” was and there was a small restaurant - but it had collapsed from the flooding. Along with numerous other places.
The road became one lane as they were clearing the mudslide.
Ended up turning around in a church parking lot and they had a “Donations” sign by a big garage. It was full of people so I figured the least I could do was write a check to help them.
Before I could even do that I told them how we had hoped to get lunch in town. The gal invited us to a picnic table as they had hamburgers and hotdogs for all the volunteers and people that had lost their homes. I tried to beg off, but she said they had plenty. (Wife, myself and two teenage daughters).
The main floor of the church was okay but the basement was trashed. The huge garage had flooded on the ground floor but the second floor was okay. They had the ground floor cleaned up and it was filled with food, water and donated clothing.
The pastor’s home had been destroyed - but he was out helping other’s clean their homes.
He stopped by the church and chatted for a bit. He pointed up onto the hillside on the other side of the road (the church was below the road a bit, and then further down the hill below the church was his destroyed home and then the small river.
Up on the hill he pointed out the large trees (16 inch + diameter?) along the road that were snapped off about 20 feet above the road elevation. He said the water came rushing over the hill like a water fall and snapped the trees off 20 feet up in the air!
I remember Camille only too well.
That storm laid our corn crop on the ground. When a corn stalk is laid down by wind or rain it’s done, doesn’t stand back up. All we could do with it was let the cattle in to graze it.
The tobacco was looking good until Camille tore it up. Wasn’t enough left to salvage to pay for itself.
Then there were the fences torn down by the flood waters. These were the types of fences other farmers wished they had. Fenceposts sunk 5-6 feet into the ground and a strand of barbed wire every 6 inches. We salvaged some fenceposts but most of the barbed wire had to be replaced.
Then there was the damage to the buildings. Not one building that didn’t need a roof by the time Camille was done.
At least we didn’t lose any cattle. My grandfather had had a hunch so we moved all the cattle to high ground before Camille got here.
We surveyed the damage afterwards and thanked God that it wasn’t worse. Then we had a sit down to figure things out. It was decided that both my parents would get jobs and I would stay out of school for a year to work the farm while they worked their jobs.
The best laid plans of mice and men, I never got to go back to school.
Some neighbors lost a few head but in Amherst and Nelson counties some farms were completely wiped out. One man lost his cattle, his crops and two barns and some equipment.
Of the 259 people killed by Camille, 153 of those were in Virginia.
There is a historical sign on a highway in Nelson county where a bus loaded with children was swept off the highway and down the mountain. No survivors.
Camille was the bitch that ruined a lot of lives.
I grew up one county south in Amherst and I was a toddler in 1969 when Camille hit. I don’t remember anything about it but I heard stories from my parents of the constant stream of National Guard helicopters flying in and out of the junior high school next to us, heading up to the hard-hit areas in Nelson County 20 miles north. Forty years later you could, if you knew where to look, still see the scars on some hills from the mudslides. It was a freak weather occurrence like no one had ever seen and will probably never see again. But it rained hard enough to stall cars. Not from driving through standing water. Just from the rain in the air.
}:-)4