Four members of the Gazette-Mail's staff look back on the devastation presented by the flood of 1985, which took place 30 years ago today and killed 47 West Virginians:
On the afternoon before the 1985 flood, those of us working in the Gazette newsroom had no idea that a catastrophe of epic proportions was about to occur.
My recollection is that we were expecting some flooding of the West Fork River in the Weston and Clarksburg areas - the damaging but rarely death-dealing inundation of low-lying areas that happened fairly often in those cities. The Stonewall Jackson Dam, a flood-control project for the West Fork, was only in its early stage of construction in November 1985.
Here in Charleston, it had been rainy but not excessively so, and there was no threat of flooding. Sometimes it's hard to remember that West Virgina's large differences in terrain, temperature and weather patterns make it possible for weather conditions to be moderate in Charleston and extreme elsewhere in the state. This was one of those times, and it happened in an era that preceded Twitter feeds, email and instant access to real-time hydrological displays.
When word of the massive flood began to trickle in on that Tuesday, I worked the phone contacting people in the flood-stricken towns that still had phone service, and then headed out to Marlinton and Parsons.
In Marlinton, the flood had crested 8 feet above flood stage, and at least one foot of water was still covering the downtown streets by the time I arrived.
I remember that the top of a house was pinned to the upstream side of the bridge over the Greenbrier River leading into the town from U.S. 219. The town's fire chief told me 100 percent of Marlinton's businesses had been battered by and submerged in floodwater from the Greenbrier and Knapps Creek.
In Parsons, I remember interviewing a guy who had just opened up a print shop with all the bells, whistles and computer-assisted technology that was available at the time. His shop was completely gutted, except for an office chair that was jammed into the ceiling, and his new gear was replaced with mud, silt and flood debris.
At the Catholic church, on Water Street, a statue of the Madonna was built into an indentation in a wall facing the river. The flood's high-water mark drew a muddy line across the top of her forehead. Bashed up, silt-filled new cars and trucks from a downtown dealership were scattered about the downtown area.
While townspeople and business operators in the two towns went through a period of shock and uncertainty, it seemed to be brief. By that Wednesday, most of the people I spoke with said they planned to rebuild. The need to hold onto home runs stronger than floodwaters in this state.
I had just turned 25 and had been a photographer at the Gazette for a little more than six months. My first thoughts, or memories, about the '85 flood are processing photos in the bathroom of the Watergate Motel, in Richwood.
After spending my first day covering the town of Marlinton, which was totally flooded, reporter Tom Kukucka and I headed back to the first town we could find with electricity, which ended up being Richwood.
In those days, black-and-white photography was the dominant medium we used for the paper.
After checking into the motel, I took over the bathroom and turned it into a darkroom. I started processing film and then making prints from a portable darkroom kit the paper owned.
All the while, the motel sat next to the normally placid Cherry River, which had turned into a raging torrent with the water lapping at the front door of the room. The water never got into our room, but it kept us up all night.
The next day, I flew with the Air National Guard over still-flooded parts of the Eastern Panhandle. Several bridges were washed away from main roads. The devastation was so widespread. I saw fields flooded with dead animals and whole blocks of homes washed away from towns.
The next two days were spent around Seneca Rocks and south on U.S. 33 at Riverton. I had never seen flooding destroy homes or people's property like I saw at this town.
Seeing flooding from the air is one thing, but seeing it close-up is another. Houses were ripped apart and all of the families' possessions were sucked away by the floodwater.
It's always so sad to talk to people after a natural disaster. Often, the news media are the first people that they really talk to about what has just happened to them. Many families lost all they had and were just in shock.
It's always so hard to photograph people in times like these. I struggled with it then, and I still do today. Looking back at what we did - telling people's stories - it put a spotlight on how devastating this flood of '85 really was on the people of West Virginia.
I remember riding in a large state helicopter with Gov. Arch Moore and one or two other people, possibly the State Police superintendent, to see the damage caused by the flooding.
We flew to Parsons and I took photos of the river destruction below as we descended through heavy clouds looking for the high school football field to land. As we landed through swirling mist, I remember a herd of cows running back and forth on the field, afraid of the helicopter, as people tried to move them to one end of the field to make room for us.
After landing, we met local officials who drove us through Parsons on any passable roads as they showed where the courthouse, businesses, houses, streets and fields had been flooded. Power poles were broken, houses wrecked, cars were lying on their tops or at the bottom of sinkholes, and muddy flood debris was everywhere. People were starting to clear the streets, buildings and their homes.
I think the tour of the town was less than an hour before we took off to see other damage from the air before flying back to Charleston, where I developed my photos so they could be printed in the next day's Gazette.
I think it was the next day or day after that reporter Rick Steelhammer and I were sent out by car for three or four days to Tucker County and the town of Hendricks, which we heard had heavy damage and was difficult to get into. When we did get there, I remember seeing lots of smoke from fires where people were burning fallen trees and piles of other flood debris.
Mud was everywhere.
We talked to people, took photos and then drove to Canaan Valley, where we planned to send our stories and photos from a cabin that the Gazette owned at the time. As it turned out, the phone was dead and there wasn't enough water pressure to develop film so we moved over to the lodge at Canaan Valley State Park, where we were able to file our reports.
I remember trying to send the pictures using an old UPI [United Press International] drum transmitter on the floor of the lobby where there was an available phone line. People would stop to ask and I would explain who we were and what the strange beeping machine with the rotating drum was doing.
For the next few days, Rick and I went to other area flooding sites, reporting and photographing the aftermath before returning to the lodge where we had a room for our base of operations. I had set up a darkroom in the bathroom and was able to develop and make prints there before transmitting them back with Rick's stories to the Gazette in Charleston.
I have two main memories of the flood of 1985. One was getting trapped by floodwater at the Summers County armory.
Photographer David Vick and I had been initially dispatched to Hinton to report on flooding from the Greenbrier River.
We had checked into a motel outside Hinton (the bathroom of which would serve as Vick's photo lab in those pre-digital days), and decided to head up that evening to the armory, which was serving as the staging area for flood relief, and also providing shelter for residents evacuated from the nearby community of Wiggins.
Relying on forecasts in Charleston that morning projecting that the Greenbrier would crest later overnight, we figured we'd get to the armory, get some pictures and interviews and get back to the motel, where Vick could develop his photos and I could dictate a story back to the newsroom. (No laptop computers then.)
However, by the time we were ready to depart, floodwater had already blocked the only access road to the armory (even a 2½-ton personnel carrier stalled out trying to traverse the water). So we joined the townspeople of Wiggins, spending the night at the armory, with the Guard providing cots, sandwiches and coffee, finally getting out the next morning to report on flood damage in the area.
(I wasn't able to call in a story that night, and can't recall if it was because there were no phones in the armory or if phone service was out. No cellphones back then, either.)
The second memory is from about a month later, a flood-relief telethon staged at the Culture Center featuring homegrown celebrities, including Chris Sarandon, Larry Groce and Kathy Mattea - and, as a last-minute addition, John Denver, who closed the five-hour live broadcast with a rousing version of "Take Me Home, Country Roads."
Given my rookie status at the time, I worked the Saturday night shift, so I got to cover the telethon.
Denver had played a concert in Washington that evening, and flew into Charleston, arriving at the Culture Center moments before he was to take the stage at 12:30 a.m., to close out the final half-hour of the telethon, taking time to do a very brief interview.
Denver talked about how the song resonated with people worldwide with its message of going home, and how he felt a kinship to West Virginia, since the song was his first hit and catapulted him to stardom.
Besides raising more than $1 million, which was a good bit of money back then, I recall that the telethon gave the state a real morale boost following a difficult month.