
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 25, 1995                   TAG: 9506260116
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BEDFORD WOMAN MISSING IN FLOOD

Searchers turned up the muddy, waterlogged car of a Bedford woman reported missing Friday by family members. But Saturday night, the apparent second victim of the raging Buffalo Creek still had not been found.

Doris Stanley's family reported her missing early Friday morning after she failed to return Thursday night to her home in Forest from Chesterfield County, said Sgt. D.S. Marsh of the Campbell County Sheriff's Office. She had been visiting her grown children, her family said.

Authorities said she more than likely perished in the flood.

``From the looks of the car, the possibility of anything else is remote,'' Bedford County Sheriff Carl Wells said. ``But that doesn't mean you stop looking or you stop hoping.''

Stanley, 58, left the Richmond area around 8 p.m. That means she would have been in the area of Buffalo Creek just before 11 p.m. - about the time the Timberlake dam disintegrated under heavy rain and sent a wave of water down the creek.

The water quickly overtook a bridge on U.S. 460 at the Bedford County line and washed several stalled cars off the road. A 41-year-old rescue worker, Carter Martin, drowned while trying to reach the submerged cars. It turned out everyone in the cars had already gotten out safely.

Searchers from the Campbell and Bedford counties' sheriff's offices found Stanley's Chevrolet Lumina around noon Saturday not far from where Martin drowned. The car, apparently washed from a bridge over Buffalo Creek on Turkey Foot Road, was resting in the creek about 150 yards downstream, Marsh said.

"It was bent up pretty good," he said.

Stanley's car was hauled from the creek, but she was not in it. The discovery of the car, however, launched an all-day search for Stanley. Searchers from at least four agencies in Bedford and Campbell counties scoured the area with dogs while a state police helicopter scanned it from above. Dark finally halted efforts for the day, but the search is scheduled to resume this morning.

A memorial service for Martin will be held at Brookville High School in Bedford at 3 p.m. today.

The Associated Press contributed information to this story.

Keywords:
FATALITY

by CNB