Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 5, 1995 TAG: 9511030115
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: S.D. HARRINGTON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Most career firefighters in the city were attending funerals for two fellow Roanoke firefighters who had been killed in a hit-and-run accident the weekend before.
Roanoke County and Salem crews stood in for the Roanoke firefighters, and volunteer firefighters took off work to fill the empty spots in those localities.
Salem firefighter Eddie Hite, one of those working in Roanoke, watched as one of the funeral processions passed the fire station. Only about six cars were in it.
"I knew something was wrong, then," said Hite, now captain of the Salem Rescue Squad. Many more colleagues than that were expected at the funeral.
Hite's instincts proved right, as the waters started rising much quicker than the dispatchers could summon emergency crews.
But through the eyes of Tommy Fuqua, Roanoke County's emergency services coordinator, having so many volunteers already on duty proved beneficial.
City firefighters were pulled away from the funerals and back to their posts. Roanoke County and Salem personnel then returned to their jurisdictions, and volunteers were already there, Fuqua said.
Virginia Tech and Blacksburg emergency crews were also summoned.
Howard Weikle, the Salem Rescue Squad captain during the flood, said he still has tapes from Salem's dispatch center.
"If you listen to that tape and don't have the willies, you ain't human," he said.
Firefighters were forced to ignore fires and focus their attention on saving lives.
"We had to prioritize life first and property second," Fuqua said.
Rescue workers had to dodge debris being tossed around by torrential waters - debris as large as 55-gallon drums and cars, Salem squad member Joe Cunningham said.
Helicopter pilots, from Roanoke Memorial Hospital's Life-Guard 10 to television choppers, were breaking all the rules to pull people off rooftops.
In Salem, Lt. Reginald Grey said mobile homes were being pushed around "like matchbox toys." He and Officer J.C. Blomberg responded to a call that an elderly lady was trapped in her mobile home at Salem Village. The officers rode to the scene in a bulldozer. They had no trouble getting there, but then the bulldozer gave in to the rising water and stalled.
As Grey and Blomberg rescued the woman and escorted her from the area, she told them that a friend was trapped in a trailer behind hers. Up to that point the water had been fairly calm, Grey said. But just beyond that first trailer, the water would have swept them away.
Grey and Blomberg climbed on the roof of the first trailer and spotted the elderly woman across the torrent. The only way to rescue her, they thought, was by air, so they sent for a helicopter.
But the downbeat of the helicopter's propellers nearly blew the men off the roof of the trailer, and they had to signal it away.
Grey grabbed a rope from the bulldozer, and the officers pulled the woman through the water to safety.
For the two years after the flood, Grey said, he received Christmas cards from one of the women.
"We really accomplished something," Grey said of the numerous rescues made that day.
Fuqua said he had no idea how many lives were saved when floods ravaged the Roanoke Valley in 1985.
"There were too many to keep track of," he said.
But, he said, just as many lessons were learned that day as well.
Now, most rescue squads in the valley train some members in swift-water rescue, he said.
The flood also accelerated an effort to form a valley emergency services coordinator association, which includes the four emergency services coordinators in the Roanoke Valley, Fuqua said.
"There were things we were working on at the time, but [the flood] brought to light that we needed to step up our efforts," he said.
The flood was a good example of how the valley can band together during major disasters, he added.
Said Fuqua: "... The potential for a lot of deaths was really there."
by CNB