ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 8, 1996 TAG: 9609090060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
MICHELLE CHAMBERS was supposed to get married Saturday. Instead, she helped her parents clean up their yard and basement.
For most of the flood-prone in Southwest Virginia, Saturday was a day to redo all they had undone Friday. All the furniture that had been moved out, the belongings hastily thrown in cars, appliances stacked up high or moved upstairs - it all went back to its rightful place Saturday as the sun came out and the predicted floodwaters receded.
Michelle Chambers of Salem spent what was supposed to be her wedding day helping her parents clean up their yard and basement on Riverside Drive.
She couldn't get married anyway, because her fiance had been trapped by flooding Friday in Elliston and they couldn't get to the courthouse to get their marriage license. So they postponed the ceremony until Monday and went to work in the yard.
There was plenty of mud and debris to clean up. But one thing she's keeping: the little box turtle that caught a ride as far as her front yard and then found itself stranded there by the receding waters.
At the Templetons' on Lakewood Drive off Brambleton Avenue, tree cutters were hauling away two immense poplars that had fallen on their house early Friday morning.
Seven-year-old Luke woke his parents about 4:30 Friday, troubled by the ferocious winds outside. No sooner had they sent him back to bed than the first tree toppled onto the house outside his bedroom window.
Fifteen minutes later, a second tree in their back yard fell. A little dogwood also toppled. All three trees were in a direct path in their back yard and they all fell uphill, toward the house.
"Usually, things fall down, not up," said Peggy Templeton, wondering about the weird wind pattern that knocked the three down.
Amazingly, there was little damage to the house, although a few rows of shingles and a gutter will have to be replaced. The trees also took out a corner of a rock wall and part of a wooden fence.
"The worst damage is having to give up these beautiful trees," John Templeton said.
But on the bright side, they'll have a better view from the master bedroom they're working on upstairs, Peggy Templeton said.
Pat Bergeron of Star City Landscapes, who was hauling away the poplars, said this storm didn't cause nearly the damage he saw after last year's ice storms.
"I'm glad it wasn't worse," he said. "I don't thrive on these disasters."
There's a 30 percent chance of thunderstorms today, but the Roanoke River crested Friday night and stages were falling along the river.
At Hollins Road Baptist Church, members began arriving early Saturday morning to tear down the plywood barricades and sandbags. Everything on the bottom floor of the church, from the kitchen to the library, had been carried up to the sanctuary and other second-floor rooms Thursday in anticipation of rains.
And it all had to be carried back down Saturday.
It was the first time the congregation had to take precautions since floodwaters swept through the bottom floor in 1985, reaching almost to the ceiling. The Rev. Mark Washington figured it was a good practice run for the next time. Now they have sandbags and boards ready - "our defense system," he calls it.
Residents in the Willow River complex in Salem were carrying their belongings back inside Saturday, a day after the fire marshal ordered them to evacuate and the utility company shut off power and removed the meters from the buildings.
Some had managed to rent trucks and get all of their possessions out, while others fled with just their legal documents, family pictures and other treasured belongings. But most apartments remained dry. Tenants in three or four units that were flooded were offered different apartments in the complex.
Jane Huffmyer, her daughter Margie Huffmyer and grandson Tommy Brown spent Friday night at the Salem Civic Center's emergency shelter and came back to their apartment to find 2 inches of muck on their carpets. Management transferred them to a second-floor apartment.
They were counting their blessings and were happy to get an apartment less likely to flood and with a view of the woods.
"I was scared to death when I walked in today," Jane Huffmyer said. "It could have been a lot worse."
They knew their apartment was prone to flooding when they moved in four months ago, but "we just didn't think it would happen this soon," she said.
Kim Hawkins and her family spent Friday night in a motel, taking clothes, their important papers and a truck full of furniture and appliances. It was the first time in the nearly two years she's lived there that she has had to evacuate, and she has no flood insurance.
She cried when she first learned she had to leave, but said everybody pitched in to help neighbors out.
Melinda and Travis Lee were taking it all in stride as they and a friend unloaded a rental truck filled with nearly their entire household. They emptied their apartment into the truck Friday, only to turn around and put it back Saturday.
They had taken out everything but their waterbeds, which they didn't have enough time to drain and move.
"A waterbed can be replaced just like that," Travis Lee said, "but pictures and stuff - you had to get those out of there."
They don't have renter's or flood insurance, but they plan to remedy that.
"We will now," Melinda Lee said. "I'm calling Monday."
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. ERIC BRADY STAFF Travis Lee (left) receives helpby CNBfrom his friend Terry Martin in moving a headboard back into his
apartment in Willow River. color
2. ERIC BRADY STAFF Richard Chambers of Riverside Drive in Salem
hoses off items damaged by the flood.
3. Aaron Gray (left) and Daniel Sink with Star City Landscapes load
up a truck with two trees' limbs which fell on a house.