HURLEY — Standing on a carpet of mud, Patsy Stevens measured her losses by the brown line that ran around her living room walls.
The line, about 4 1/2 feet from the floor, marked the height of the floodwaters that invaded her double-wide mobile home. Everything below the line, Stevens said, was ruined.
“That leaves the light fixtures,” she said, looking ruefully at an untouched chandelier that hung over a jumble of water-logged furniture and mud-caked carpet.
Stevens and her husband, Donnie, spent the day Sunday sorting through what Knox Creek left of their home. It was one of about 250 buildings caught in the path of a flash flood that ripped through the Buchanan County community of Hurley on Thursday evening.
The rain-swollen creek jumped its banks with little warning, pulling at least one person to his death, trapping others on their rooftops, and sweeping cars and mobile homes downstream like so many corks in the current.
A mobile home next to the Stevenses’ slammed into their home. It snagged the corner of their carport, leaning precariously at a 45-degree angle. Surveying the scene Sunday, Donnie Stevens figured that if anything good can come from a trailer hitting your house, this was it: The mobile home served as a dam that offered some protection for his own home.
From their front porch, the Stevenses did not have to look far to see the extent of the damage. Across Virginia 643 sits Exotic Creations, a beauty shop and tanning salon that Patsy Stevens owned. It too was a loss – one not covered by flood insurance because of its close proximity to the creek.
A short distance down 643, the main drag of a creekside strip of homes and businesses hemmed in by steep mountain walls, Trey Adkins was shovelling mud out of Grundy National Bank. He stopped long enough to point out the landmarks of Hurley – what few were left. “This was the bank,” he said.
“What’s left of the building you’re looking at, that used to be an auto parts store.”
“That’s the grocery store; it’s a complete loss.”
The Virginia Department of Emergency Management issued a statement Sunday from Gov. Mark Warner confirming that President Bush has declared Buchanan and Tazewell counties a major disaster area. The declaration means residents of the counties are eligible for federal assistance programs, including housing help, low-interest loans and grants for home repairs.
Residents of Hurley were starting to rebuild Sunday as steam rose from piles of mud baked by the warm sun. This is home, said Cathy Hall, and it will take more than high water to force most people away. Hall, like many others Sunday, was upbeat in the face of disaster.
“That’s us mountain folk,” Jackie Justice said. “We lose everything and we say: ‘We’re fine.’ ”
Despite losing both her home and business, Patsy Stevens was grateful for what she had left.
“Homes can be replaced,” she said. “But if I’d lost my family . . .”
Thursday afternoon, Stevens might have wondered if that was about to happen. Working at her beauty shop, she kept a wary eye on the creek, which had been fed by a torrential thunderstorm earlier in the day. At the same time, she checked regularly on her disabled mother, who lives with her across the street.
It started to rain hard again around 5, and soon the creek jumped its banks and flowed onto 643. “It looked like Niagara Falls just coming down the road,” she said. Stevens called her husband at work and told him to come home. Then she rushed across the street to her mother.
By the time Stevens got her mother and three dogs into her Ford Explorer, the water was up to the SUV’s grille. As she pulled out of the carport, muddy water flowed over the hood. Then the engine stalled.
“We were just totally surrounded by water,” she said. Stevens tried frantically to start the engine. “Finally, I don’t know how – but for the grace of God – it started.” Stevens drove to a nearby home on higher ground and waited for the water to recede.
Donnie Stevens, meanwhile, was headed back to Hurley from his job in West Virginia. Ten miles from home, flooding blocked the road. Stevens got out of his pickup truck and walked the rest of the way, sometimes climbing into the brush on the mountain walls to escape the water.
When he finally got home, he found a corpse in his carport.
Robert Stallenberger, who witnesses had seen earlier clinging to a home 100 yards upstream from Stevens’ house, was lying face down in the mud. Stevens said the sight startled him so that when he ran off, he left his boots stuck in the mud behind him.
Stevens waved down a nearby sheriff’s deputy. Authorities recovered the body about midnight Thursday but were still searching for a second body Sunday afternoon.
Burl Blankenship, an 85-year-old man last seen going into his trailer shortly before it was swept downstream, is missing and presumed dead.
A search of Knox Creek – including the use of a dog trained to sniff for bodies – was called off late Sunday afternoon. Bobby Jones, incident commander for the Appalachian Search and Rescue Conference, said authorities suspect Blankenship’s body might be hidden in one of the piles of debris along the creek banks. Strong currents compressed the piles so tightly that heavy machinery will be needed to complete the search, Jones said.
Several hours later, state police said a body has been recovered. But as of late Sunday night no identification had been made.
As search teams fanned out along the banks of the creek, they found remnants of people’s lives caught in the branches of trees bowed over in the direction the flood once flowed: a battered photograph of someone’s children playing in the ocean; a green cracked Frisbee; a toy car.
Although the floodwaters quickly receded, some people remained trapped in their homes. Sgt. M.F. McMurray of the Virginia State Police estimated that 80 private bridges were destroyed in the flood. Flat land is rare in Buchanan County, so many people build their homes on the banks of a creek. Then they have to build a driveway across the water.
With his bridge washed out, Jim Clevinger was using a johnboat to ferry back and forth. “There’s no other way across unless you wade,” he said.
Meanwhile, there were no estimates on the amount of damage caused by flooding that was mostly confined to the northern part of the county.
“I’d say it’s way into the millions,” said Del. Jackie Stump, D-Buchanan County, who toured the area.
On Sunday, lingering showers finally gave way to warm sunshine. The mud-slickened road quickly dried and, by late afternoon, dust was rising from Virginia 643, which just three days earlier had been at the bottom of Knox Creek.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Correction Because of incorrect information from police, Bural Blankenship’s name was misspelled in stories Sunday and Monday about flooding in Buchanan County.