
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 24, 1995                   TAG: 9506260062
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TIMBERLAKE                                LENGTH: Medium

HE WENT TO SAVE HIS NEIGHBORS; INSTEAD, HE ALMOST DROWNED

Everett Chadbourne tried to rescue his community. Instead, he ended up shivering on top of his Jeep, cold and wet, surrounded by a brown raging river.

As soon as he heard about rising waters, Chadbourne - the volunteer maintenance supervisor for the homeowners' association - rushed to his car intending to open emergency spillway valves at the Timberlake dam to keep the water level down.

He made it a few thousand yards down the road before water stalled his car. "It died. I couldn't get it restarted," he said. "And then the water started to rise. For 15 or 20 minutes, there wasn't any water in the car, but then it began to seep in the doors. When it got between my knee and my ankle, I decided to get out while the power windows still worked."

As the waters swirled and rose higher and higher, Chadbourne climbed to the roof of his car, where he clung precariously for more than two hours. "All I could think was, if the Jeep moved I didn't know what would happen," he recalled.

Early on, four men came along and threw him a life vest tied to a rope. They stayed with Chadbourne and communicated with the local sheriff's office by phone. Dispatchers told Chadbourne to stay on the car and wait for a rescue boat. He waited and waited, but no boat came.

Finally, he tied the rope tightly around himself and jumped into the water, and the other men pulled him in.

"I swallowed a little water," he said. "I was cold and shivering and glad to be safe."

Another resident later made it to the valve, but couldn't open it because it was already under water. "I'm probably lucky," Chadbourne said. "If I hadn't gotten tangled up here, I probably would've gone over the dam."

But his luck went only so far: When he returned home, he learned that his house was one of a very few damaged by rising groundwater. His new floor, carpeting and a whole set of new furniture was destroyed. His family has no flood insurance.

by CNB