ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 5, 1996 TAG: 9609050079
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
Mark Reynolds paced up and down his fortified patio Wednesday morning like a soldier in a mortar-rattled bunker. Wrapped in a "Winston Cup Racing" poncho, his wet bangs stuck to his forehead, Reynolds inspected the 5-foot wall that surrounded him.
On the other side of the wall, 4 feet of muddy water that wouldn't fit in Mud Lick Creek lapped ever higher. The creek had swollen overnight and left its banks in a hurry after a heavy downpour.
Reynolds left work early and began his patrol. It was the first test of his homemade floodwall.
At Reynolds' feet, three sump pumps buzzed away, clearing out an inch or two of water piling up around backed-up drains. Inside the house, the ocean-blue hue of The Weather Channel spilled across the wet floor as Reynolds' wife, Donna, and a friend mopped and squeegeed.
"He's a Weather Channel addict," Donna Reynolds said of her husband. But in his latest battle against nature, Reynolds was holding his ground.
The assault began about 8:30 a.m., when the stretch of the creek that runs behind the Reynoldses' house at Grandin Road and Beverly Boulevard started moving toward their basement.
By 10:30 a.m., the water was 4 feet deep in their back yard. But the wall seemed to be holding.
"This wall is built stronger than a prison wall," Mark Reynolds said. The 5 feet of it above ground are supported by another 5 feet below ground. Each row of cinder block has a metal bar in it, and the entire wall is filled with concrete.
The result is a suburban citadel, complete with a hot tub and grill.
After replacing his furnace, water heater, clothes dryer, washing machine and more drywall in the past eight years than he cares to remember, Reynolds could take no more flooding in his basement. He spent $10,000 on the wall and became a self-styled flood control engineer in the process, but he's not happy about it.
He knew the house was in a flood plain when he bought it, he said, but he didn't know how bad it could get.
Federal Emergency Management Agency guidelines won't let him regrade his yard or do much of anything else to control the flooding on his property, he said, because it would worsen flooding on everyone else's property downstream.
"They tell us we can't dump water on anybody else," his neighbor Carl Tickle said, as the muddy creek merged with his swimming pool, "but everybody's dumping water on us."
"Everybody" is all the development along Mud Lick Creek upstream in Roanoke County. On Wednesday, water rushing off Sugar Loaf Mountain poured through houses and yards all along the creek. Almost no one was spared.
But even as Mark Reynolds cursed every government official who had, in his estimation, done nothing to help him in his plight, the water was receding.
By 11:15 a.m, the water was mostly gone from the Reynoldses' yard. Mud was everywhere, and his white patio wall had a brown high-water mark on it.
But it had held.
Reynolds had saved himself considerable expense from further water damage to his house, but he also had identified a bitter irony to his victory.
"You know," he said, "I'll bet you they go up on my real estate taxes because I built this patio."
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN/Staff. 1. Mark Reynolds checks a sump pumpby CNBbehind a steel-reinforced brick wall surrounding the back of his
home on Beverly Boulevard near Mud Lick Creek. 2. Brian Moore joins
in the defense against nature's assault by helping out in the
basement of Mark Reynolds' home. color.