ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, June 24, 1996 TAG: 9606240100
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LYNCHBURG
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
TEN INCHES OF RAIN fell along the Bedford County-Campbell County line June 22, 1995, bursting a dam, and drowning a volunteer firefighter and a Bedford woman. Survivors still struggle with memories of the disaster.
It had been raining hard for hours by the time Carter Martin reached the bridge over Buffalo Creek on U.S. 460 late that night last June.
Water was rising to the windows of three cars stalled on the flooded bridge. In the darkness, nobody could tell if anyone was inside.
Martin, a firefighter with the Brook- ville/Timberlake Volunteer Fire Department, tied a rope to the hook on his belt, then threaded it through the eyehole.
Lynchburg Life Saving Crew Chief Kimball Glass, a volunteer rescuer for 45 years, came up behind Martin and said, "Carter, you just be careful. God knows, water can be real dangerous."
"Don't worry, Pop. I'll take care of it," Martin assured Glass.
The rope was tied to a nearby fire engine, and five other firefighters took their places on the life line, wading in behind Martin. The water was already well over their knees as they began sloshing through the rough current from the swollen creek that had overtaken the bridge.
A couple of minutes later, Lynchburg volunteer rescuers Mike Smoot and Sam Green made their way into the water in a small rowboat, holding the bridge's guardrail to guide them across. They offered to check out the cars, but Martin told them not to worry about it; he was closer.
Suddenly, the water began rising faster. It lifted the front ends of 14-ton firetrucks. One fireman tethered to the rope fell and turned upside down, caught headfirst underwater.
Smoot and Green acted fast to free the firefighter and ferry him and the others to shore. They had just rescued the fifth and were on their way to get Martin, who was trapped against the edge of the bridge in water rising over his waist. Then, Smoot recalled last week, "all of a sudden, no warning or nothing ... with no warning at all, it was like a...''
Smoot paused, his voice shaking, choking back tears. "It was like a wall of water, probably 30 feet high. ... It just hit and swamped our boat, and Carter disappeared."
A few hours earlier that night, about a mile north of the bridge on the Bedford-Campbell County line, Everett "Chad" Chadbourne was worried by the rain, too.
Chadbourne, a school teacher, was also maintenance supervisor for the Timberlake Homeowners Association, a volunteer position that mainly meant looking after the community's aging earthen dam.
Built in 1926, the privately owned dam created a lakefront resort community for Lynchburg's well-to-do. During the Depression, the resort went bankrupt and the mile-long lake eventually became the center of a sprawling subdivision that was home to Chadbourne and Martin.
After the hours of rain, the banks of the lake were flooded. About 8 p.m., Chadbourne jumped into his Jeep and headed up the road, intending to open an emergency spillway valve and lower the lake's water level. About 1,000 yards out, though, his car hit a patch of deep water and stalled.
He tried to restart it, but the engine died. Before too long, the rising water was seeping in the car doors. As the water swirled higher and higher, he climbed to the roof of his car and clung there, waiting for rescue and praying the Jeep wouldn't move.
Eventually, some neighbors came by and threw him a life vest tied to a rope and called the Campbell County Sheriff's Office for help. Dispatchers said a boat would be coming.
But Chadbourne waited on top of the Jeep for more than two hours, shivering, wet and cold, with no sign of the boat. Finally, he tied the rope tightly around himself and jumped into the rushing water.
It wouldn't have mattered if Chadbourne had made it to the valve. It was already underwater. Besides, it was an 8-inch pipe: It couldn't have moved enough water fast enough to put the lake back at a safe level.
About 10 p.m., the water sloshed over the road on top of the dam, biting away pieces of concrete and earth. By 10:45, with a sound like a convoy of freight trains, the dam fell apart, sending boats, canoes and millions of gallons of water rushing through the forest downstream.
That was just about the time Doris Stanley was heading home to Bedford County on Turkey Foot Road, just south of the dam. It had been her day off from her job at a bulk mailing company, and the 58-year-old church deaconess had been to Richmond for her daughter-in-law's birthday. Her husband of 10 years, Latham, had stayed at home because he had to work.
The water had already risen on Turkey Foot Road, but it's impossible to know exactly what happened. Maybe her car stalled. Maybe she tried to climb to higher ground. With a force that had already knocked almost a mile of forest down flat, the speeding wall of water swallowed Stanley and her Chevrolet Lumina.
Tall, sandy-haired and built like one of the high-school football players he coached, Carter Martin was a Lynchburg firefighter by profession. Most folks will tell you he had two loves: his family and saving lives.
Martin, 41, doted on his 2-year-old daughter, Katelyn, Brookville/Timberlake Chief Gerald Mays recalled. "He was always bringing her to the fire station and letting her play on the trucks. He was just a proud poppa."
Mike Smoot was the last person to see Martin alive.
Sitting in the boat on the swamped bridge, "I was within 10 feet of Carter," Smoot said, his voice breaking. "I saw the expression on his face ... the look on his face, he knew what was happening and he had accepted it ... [but] I know he was worried about his family."
Remembering that night a year later, Smoot tried to hold back a year of pain and frustration, and - like the Timber Lake dam - failed, and let it all out in a torrent. "I know for a fact in my mind, if that dam hadn't broke, I'd have saved him," he said with a sad anger. "I saved the other firefighters, and if that dam hadn't broke, I'd have saved him, too."
Instead, the water from the lake swept over Martin. It knocked Smoot, and Sam Green, his partner, out of their tiny boat.
"I had to make sure Sam was safe, because he was my responsibility," Smoot said, "I was the one who told him to get in the boat." Green, 22, had grown up playing with Smoot's son, and the 43-year-old Smoot had tried to be a mentor to Green.
Just before they fell out of the boat, a falling tree branch had hit Green, stunning him. In the water, Smoot fought against the current and reached out for Green, shoving him into the fork of a tree, where the water pressure kept him pinned and safe. Then, clinging precariously to his own branch, Smoot tried to calm Green and radioed for help.
Not too long after that, the current knocked Smoot loose from the branch he was holding and pulled him under. His legs became tangled in debris and pine underbrush. "I was scared at that point. I could feel myself running out of air and probably taking on a little water."
Smoot fought his way back to the choppy, fast-flowing surface. "The rain was coming down so hard it literally looked black," he recalled. He tried to call out to Green, "but no matter how much I yelled, he couldn't hear me." Luckily, a tree fell near Green and the younger man was able to use it to climb to shore.
Meanwhile, Smoot was holding on to tree branches. The water was hitting him square in the face. When it became too much, he had to let go, and was carried downstream until he could find another branch to grip.
It went that way until he came to a tree with a large forked branch sitting above the water. He was able to hold on to the tree, but he was so tired from fighting the current that he couldn't pull himself up onto the branch.
Ultimately, Smoot picked a path back to shore, searching during flashes of lightning for sturdy trees and floating debris to walk or climb on.
When his wife was first missing, Latham Stanley thought she might have been kidnapped. He was making up fliers to put up around the state when former Bedford County Sheriff Carl Wells came to his door and told him his wife's car had been found. A day later, they found her body.
Recently, Stanley filed suit against the Timberlake Homeowners Association and the Lynchburg-based engineering firm of Hurt & Proffitt for $2 million in the death of his wife.
In his suit, he alleges that the homeowners and the engineering firm, which had made a study of the dam, were negligent and permitted "hazardous conditions" that could have led to the dam break. The homeowners say they're not responsible for the break, claiming it was an act of God. They note that their dam met state dam safety standards and the record rainfall they received over 10 hours exceeded the dam's capacity.
Stanley, who has multiple sclerosis and gets around with a walker, says that without his wife's assistance, things have been tough.
"It's been sort of a struggle," he said, surrounded by hand-painted wooden country crafts and duck decoys that his wife made. "But every death is an act of God, I guess. We're not going to live forever. Some people are killed and some die of natural causes, but it's all an act of God, I think."
On the card he filled out for his 25th college reunion, Chad Chadbourne put down "Jeep Surfing" as one of his hobbies.
"You laugh about it, but it has an impact," he said. "When you have a near-death experience, it has an impact on your outlook.
"I suppose for me, the sadness in remembering that night is that I got rescued and within an hour, I found out we had lost Carter. The dam is a material loss. That's going to be tore down and rebuilt, but there's a hole in the community where Carter is gone.''
Chadbourne said, "The material things don't matter as much as the people, and [nearly dying] makes you appreciate that more. We get so bogged down in what we have - how many CDs, how many TVs - we forget that what really matters is being here, and thinking about your friend who is not."
A year after the Timberlake disaster, Mike Smoot said he probably doesn't take as many chances as he used to.
After getting out of the water that night, he was taken to Lynchburg General Hospital, where doctors spent almost four hours cutting splinters, left by the debris and tree branches he had been dragged and thrown against, out of his arms. Weeks later, he was still picking splinters out himself.
Smoot has had a hard time dealing with Martin's death and his frustration over being unable to save him. "It gets to me to talk about it, but I know it helps. ... I know Carter was doing what he loved to do, and that was helping people."
Many of Carter Martin's teammates at the Brookville/Timberlake Volunteer Fire Department are also still coming to grips with his death, said Chief Gerald Mays, a lifelong friend of Martin's. The squad recently had a session with an emergency counseling team who helped members face the anniversary.
For some, it's frustrating to know that Martin gave his life trying to save people from cars that later turned out to be empty.
"Carter did what Carter thought was best," Mays said. "If you think you have a chance to save someone's life, then you're going to take that little inherent risk.
"If the dam hadn't broke, it's my firm opinion he would still be here with us, but nature was working against us that night."
LENGTH: Long : 199 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff. Lynchburg Life Saving Crew Chiefby CNBKimball Glass warned Carter Martin to be careful. 2. After running
through the grass-covered lake bed, the stream that fed Timber Lake
makes a small pool at the area of the dam break. 3. A cross has been
placed on the Bedford/Campbell County line sign on U.S. 460 where
volunteer firefighter Carter Martin lost his life. color. 4.
(headshot) Mike Smoot. Graphic: Map by staff. color.