ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, October 4, 1996 TAG: 9610040056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: GRUNDY
SOURCE: Associated Press
Residents returned to their homes Thursday after the threat of an earthen wall giving way to surging water caused them to flee.
A coal company pumped millions of gallons of water away from the 50-foot-high wall, threatened when heavy rains moved debris into two drainage tunnels and clogged them, officials said.
The hill, which acted as a dam although it wasn't designed as one, protects the small hollow above the Little Prater community, about three miles from Grundy. Jewell Smokeless Coal Co. also uses the mound as a crude roadway to transport its product across the hollow.
At one point, the water was rising an inch every seven minutes. It topped out only inches from the top of the wall and ``started bringing the top off,'' State Trooper George Ball said. ``It was just washing it away.''
State police Lt. C.L. Bailey said that if the dam had broken, ``it would have completely cleaned out the hollow, washing the homes and everything away.''
As many as 1,000 Grundy residents were sent to Vansant Elementary School and told to stay away overnight. Many stayed with friends and relatives, and about 50 others were put up in hotels, the coal company said.
Jewell Smokeless spokesman James Keen said the flooding started when an upstream drainage pipe that had been clogged since spring burst, releasing a torrent of water and debris. The debris soon clogged a drainage pipe three miles from Grundy, and water began to fill the hollow.
The wall was the only thing remaining to protect the community.
``It held and kept the water back,'' Keen said. ``It may have saved the community.''
LENGTH: Short : 40 linesby CNB