Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 9, 1994 TAG: 9406090058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DRAPER LENGTH: Medium
A gauge at one home showed that 6 inches of rain fell in three hours Tuesday, a surprise to residents in other parts of the county who saw only drizzles.
Pat Beck said that she and her husband, Joe, had just bought their home on the New River a week ago and thought they would have no more work to do on it. They had moved from Cana.
When a mudslide hit the back of the house after 8 p.m. Tuesday, they took their son, Joseph, and got out. It was not until they returned that they found a second slide had crashed through the back of the house and into at least one room.
The waterfront house that was pushed off its foundation belonged to Bobby Phillips and H.C. Carter of Red Oak Construction Co. of Wytheville. It was occupied by four summer employees, who got just enough warning from the noise to escape, wearing only their underwear.
"After they got out here," Phillips said, standing about 30 feet from where the home clung to a hillside above the river, "they looked back, and here came the mudslide, right behind them." Trees brought down from a still-higher hill covered and crushed a pickup truck.
The four workers - assistant coaches B.I. Sawyers and Billy Franks and players Pat Walker and Ernie Mattingly - were part of the same Emory & Henry College football team on which Carter's son played. They met Carter through the team and signed on for summer jobs.
Carter and Phillips had let them stay at the home while they worked in the Radford area so that they could relax in the evenings without traveling home.
"All their belongings are still in there," Carter said. It probably will be a long time before they agree to such relaxation again, he said.
Neighbors took them in and called Carter and Phillips to let them know what happened.
"We've got some good neighbors. Everybody looks after everybody else," Phillips said.
Shirley Rigney had recently moved from her mobile home to a nearby house, but had not yet moved her four cockatiels. She has had two of the birds, Mikey and Tweet, for three years and the others, Wimpy and Brittany, about two months.
"And thank God for the two men who saved my birds," she said. Jack Eller and Wayne Brayson got into the wrecked trailer, emerged with the two cages and carried them to Rigney's home.
Rigney was playing cards with friends when the slides occurred.
Appalachian Power Co. crews were still working Wednesday to restore power to an area between Draper and Allisonia. People driving heavy excavating equipment carefully negotiated narrow and often muddy roads to clean up places.
Pulaski County's emergency services coordinator, Sam Crigger, was alerted to the problem shortly after 8 p.m. Tuesday. He did not get home again until 2:45 a.m. Wednesday and was back at the scene at 7 a.m.
He said there were eight to 10 slides Tuesday night. Some on Julia Simpkins Road trapped a group of people at a revival - "at least 20 vehicles stranded over there until we got the road opened." Six slides blocked all or part of the road along Max Creek.
The Virginia Department of Transportation provided graders to clear roads, he said. Four homes, including the one belonging to Phillips and Carter and Rigney's mobile home, sustained heavy damage. Others certainly sustained mud damage of which their owners are still unaware.
"They'll sure be in for a surprise when they come back to the lake," he said.
Last winter's ice storms left tree stumps uprooted in some of the areas where slides happened, Crigger said, and may have weakened the ground. "I'm certainly sure it helped contribute to it," he said. "It's just been one thing after another, you know?"
by CNB