Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 16, 1993 TAG: 9303160218
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLAND LENGTH: Long
MOTORIST SAYS `THE PEOPLE HERE IN BLAND HAVE BEEN INCREDIBLE'
Bob Knaack, and his wife, Barbara, left home in Holland, Mich., Friday morning headed for their daughter's home in Fayetteville, N.C., to see a new grandbaby.Barbara warned Bob that a big snowstorm was predicted for the weekend but he shrugged it off. He remembered past forecasts of bad storms that had proved wrong.
"I didn't listen," he said.
The Knaacks and their dog, Buffy, made it through West Virginia to within 35 miles of the Virginia line Friday evening before heavy snow and jackknifed trucks stopped them.
They spent seven hours stuck on Interstate 77 in their small car. They read and dozed to pass the time. They kept the motor running for heat.
Knaack, a 59-year-old carpenter, said they were never in danger but he was worried. "If you run out of gas in that subzero weather, you get in trouble."
They were stalled several more hours after crossing into Virginia on Saturday morning. After the trucks that blocked the road were pulled out of the way, an unknown good Samaritan led the Knaacks and a caravan of other stranded motorists to Bland County High School.
From Friday evening until after noon Monday, the rural, mountainous Bland County, normally home to 6,000, made room for 1,800 more. They put them up in seven shelters, including 600 at the high school, said county Social Services Director Yvonne Endicott. Union Church and the Church of God, both in Bastian, housed roughly 300 travelers each.
Bland residents didn't just give those stranded along I-77 a place to lie down. They entertained and fed them as well.
They used the high school cafeteria's supplies and food donated by businesses - such as GIV Corp.'s employees, who gave food, blankets and diapers. The kitchen at Bland Correctional Center provided home-baked bread.
Motorists who came off the highway expecting no better than a cold hot dog and chips never had to eat the same hot meal twice throughout the weekend.
One of the few travelers still waiting in the school's lobby Monday afternoon was Ariel Macatangay, 26, a graduate student in chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Macatangay was traveling alone to visit a friend in Ann Arbor, Mich., when jackknifing trucks south of the Big Walker Mountain tunnel blocked his way.
By 6 p.m. Saturday, his and about a dozen other cars and three big trucks made it into the tunnel. They were forced to spend Saturday night there.
They shared their food. Truck drivers invited others into the warmth of their cabs. State Department of Transportation workers opened an office and let people use the telephone.
"The people in the tunnel and the people here in Bland have been incredible," said Macatangay, who made it to the high school Sunday.
Bland Principal Roger Thompson said people slept in classrooms. Families were kept together and an effort was made to give them as much privacy as possible.
The school's gym was opened for volleyball and basketball and its dressing rooms for hot showers. The classrooms have television sets and some killed time watching movies.
"What impressed me more than anything else was the attitude of people who were in trouble," Thompson said. "We didn't have to raise our voice to anyone."
Those stranded pitched in and helped out. Tom Shultz, a Canadian businessman, helped keep people out of the school office and registered newcomers to the shelter.
The county's two doctors, both of whom live in Bluefield, were called to the shelter and treated people for such ailments as sore throats, upset stomachs and high-blood pressure. If someone needed medicine, Thompson announced it on the school's intercom and others agreed to share their own.
Saturday afternoon, three tour-bus loads of retirees on their way back to Pennsylvania from Florida were brought to the high school. They had been trapped on the south side of Big Walker Mountain tunnel overnight and had nothing to eat since Friday morning.
One elderly couple had to be hospitalized in Wytheville, but a National Guard helicopter flew them back to the school Monday in time to catch their bus for home.
Another of the last few stranded travelers at the school was Elderidge Copeland, a 32-year-old truck driver from Bishopville, S.C.
He dozed with his head resting on a wooden desk just inside the school's front door. Nearby was a tall stack plastic bags filled with the weekend's trash to be hauled away.
Copeland - an Army veteran who has been driving trucks only since November - was waiting for a mechanic to come to fix his truck, which wouldn't start.
He was on the interstate Friday when the snow was so bad that you couldn't tell the roadway from the ditch lines. The wind was blowing so hard he worried that his truck would turn over.
Copeland had been in the shelter since Friday night. If it had not been for the people in Bland, he said, the snowy road would have claimed a lot of casualties.
Bland County got 30 inches of snow, which drifted to more than a dozen feet in some places. Thompson said he doesn't expect schools to reopen there until next Monday.
That'll give him time to refill the cafeteria's storeroom.