ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 5, 1996 TAG: 9609050072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRISTINA NUCKOLS STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Lede
Cravens Creek gushed around Jim Cunningham's knees as he used a pitchfork to pry loose a log lodged against the bridge leading to his home.
"Anything to get out of work," he said with a wry smile.
Cunningham left early from his job at Kroger when he heard that Cravens Creek was rising Wednesday morning. He's lived beside the creek with his family for 61/2 years, long enough to know what he'd find when he pulled off Cravens Creek Road onto the gravel drive that leads to his Roanoke home. The road came to an abrupt watery end at the bridge, the only means of access to the house.
Cunningham made it across in his truck so he could move two cars threatened by the rising waters, but he and his wife, Brenda, made plans to spend the night with her mother.
"I just love it here, and then every time it floods, I want to move," Brenda Cunningham said.
The National Weather Service reported 11/4 to 2 inches of rain in Roanoke County over a 24-hour period ending Wednesday afternoon, mostly along a narrow strip through the center of the county.
The worst of the water poured off Sugarloaf Mountain, flooding basements and roads along Mud Lick and Cravens creeks and submerging Garst Mill Park.
In Roanoke County, the Virginia Department of Transportation reported short-term closings of parts of Cedar Ridge Road, McVitty Road, Garst Mill Road, Knowles Drive and Castle Hill Avenue. A mudslide occurred in the southbound lanes of Brambleton Avenue near Colonial Avenue early Wednesday, according to Laura Bullock, VDOT spokeswoman. The only evacuation reported in the county was an elderly couple on Knowles Drive, whom firefighters helped after the man's oxygen tank malfunctioned. All county roads had been cleared by the afternoon.
Wanda Reed, Roanoke's coordinator of emergency services, said parts of Edgewood Street, Mud Lick Road, Shenandoah Avenue and Campbell Avenue were closed temporarily because of water.
Passengers of four vehicles caught in water on Wiley Drive were rescued by emergency crews, Reed said. Another motorist was pulled from a stranded car on Edgewood Street near Brandon Avenue.
At that same intersection, Jeff Brewer stared out the window of the E-Z-N Food Mart as Mud Lick Creek crept toward him. A black-and-white television screen beside him flashed an endless series of rainy scenes from the parking lot's security cameras.
"It's getting kind of spooky," said Brewer, the store manager, as he called in a flood update to his bosses.
Outside, Roanoke police were shifting barricades as the creek closed in from two sides. Inside, the store was warm and smelled of fried potatoes, but an occasional muffled thunk reminded Brewer that the creek was nearby.
In fact, the convenience store is built on a bridge so the creek runs directly beneath it.
"You can feel the logs bumping under the floor," Brewer said. "Almost like it's coming through."
In response to Brewer's calls, men in suits soon were congregating in front of the store. Jerry Harless, one of the owners, said several cars were washed out of the parking lot of what then was a 7-Eleven during the flood of 1985. But by midday Wednesday, the waters were receding, and Harless was smiling and relaxed. If nothing else, the scare left him with an evacuation plan for later in the week, when Hurricane Fran is expected to chase more rain clouds into the region.
Oakley Covey was thinking about Fran as he and Milton Taylor stood on a nearby hillside watching traffic slosh through water and debris on Brandon Avenue.
Covey, who wore a blue-and-white striped engineer's cap, said he was planning to attend a picnic for Norfolk & Western Railroad retirees today in Salem.
"They say [Friday] isn't going to be any better," Taylor pointed out, but his friend wasn't quite ready to give up on his plans for fried chicken and potato salad.
"I'm gonna play it by ear," Covey said.
At his home on Garst Mill Road, Roger Shipplett waded into the basement, the water chest-high on his 6-foot frame, to turn off his power just before the water reached his breaker box. Then he watched out his back window as a series of trees, ripped from the earth by the water, acted as a battering ram on his neighbor's fence.
"Look at my tree over there," he said, pointing to a slender, 40-foot tree lying in his back yard. "Hey, that's not my tree. I don't know whose tree that is."
Staff writer Matt Chittum contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Don Petersen. 1. A motorist decides against trying toby CNBcross Halvan Road into Garts Mill Park in Roanoke County. 2. Rains
take their toll on Garst Mill Park.