The 1977 Flood

    Almost everyone in Southwest Virginia remembers the Flood of '77 but I had a unique perspective. I was in it.

    On April 4 when the rains kept coming down, I went with my parents to work at Garden Elementary in Oakwood VA. They were the custodians there. Our truck had been blocked in the driveway by a mudslide and a neighbor had taken all of us to the school early that morning. We watched the creek keep rising and waited for the schools to be cancelled. By the time they were cancelled, the phone lines were out to our neighbors and we didn't have a ride home until we could contact someone to come get us. Of course my parents were supposed to work anyway. Just because the school was cancelled didn't mean that they got the day off work so my brother and I were stuck there at the school with our parents.
    The rain kept falling and we kept watching the creek rise. Garden Elementary is located where Garden Creek joins the Levisa River. The Levisa was rising but so was Garden Creek. There was a walking bridge across Garden Creek that led to the high school and there was a lot of debris that kept getting caught there causing water to back up and in general acting like a dam. It wasn't long before the water was rushing around the bridge as well as over it.
    I watched from inside the cafeteria for a long time as the water rose. I saw it inching its way up the cafeteria steps. After a while I went to the library which was on the second floor. The library faced the river and I could watch all the action from there. By about 10:00am or so everyone had left but us. The water had surrounded the building and we couldn't have left if we wanted to.
    We never expected the water to get as high as it did. When the water started reaching the cafeteria windows we brought some food up to the library from the cafeteria. I don't remember a lot except peanut butter and crackers and peaches and pears. We knew by then that we were going to be there for a while. I remember watching things floating down the river and counting the number of tires and balls that I saw. I would go from classroom to classroom on the second floor watching what was happening.
    Later on that morning I was on the lower end of the building when I saw one of the mobile units (classrooms in mobile homes) float up off the foundation and float toward the Garden Creek bridge. That was the bridge that spanned the river that everyone drove across to go up Garden creek. It floated around and just kept banging against the bridge until it just totally broke up. Which of course added to the debris that was damming the river causing the water to get deeper behind it.
    All of a sudden there was a loud roaring. The water had broken through the cafeteria windows and was rushing through the downstairs hallway. The river was no longer going around the school but was now going through it. We watched as the water level started climbing on the stairs. I remember going from the place in the hallway where I could look down at the stairs to the other end of the hallway where I could watch as more of the mobile units were picked up and smashed against the bridge. This continued off and on throughout the day. I went from the library to the hallway to the classrooms just watching to see what happened.
    Sometime during the afternoon I was at the lower end watching a mobile unit smash when I looked and noticed the end of the building was cracking apart. There was a big crack running up near the top corner on the backside of the building and I watched it widen till you could see the daylight from the other side. Of course I told mom but there wasn't anything she could do except pray and remind me that God was watching out for us.
    During the entire time we were in that building I don't recall being scared at all. At least not till that night and we were going to wade out. The water was down to around 3 foot or so deep by that point in the building and the river had really slowed so they decided to try and wade out. We went downstairs and through the doorway leading to the back of the building. It was dark the water was cold and I could feel the current tugging.
    My mom and dad had hold of us and we waded across the back parking lot to the road and then climbed the hill to the railroad trestle. I do remember how the current pulled against me but my parents hung on. While that was scary I don't think it was as scary to me as what came next, the actual crossing across the trestle. As we walked on the railroad trestle I could look down and see the river raging below us. It was still raining and the wind was blowing and I was afraid I would fall in the water and be swept away. Once across the trestle we stayed on the track a few hundred yards till we were behind the high school then came down. The high school hadn't had as much water because it was only on the banks of the one river instead of where they joined. We went and found the custodians there (they lived out back and were in the school as well since their mobile home had been flooded as well) and spent the night in the high school library.
    Upon returning home the next day we found that the creek in front of our house had gotten up in the road (we lived near the beginning of the Levisa River). But for us the only damage was the mudslide and our power being out. We lived high enough up on the bank we joked that it would have taken a flood like Noah's to get to our house. Fortunately God had watched over us once again.