When the heavens opened on the fateful Wednesday evening 50 years ago, people who lived up Magazine Hollow did what they normally do -- they kept an eye on the water pouring down the street.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- When the heavens opened on the fateful Wednesday evening 50 years ago, people who lived up Magazine Hollow did what they normally do -- they kept an eye on the water pouring down the street.
Some, like young Terry Stone and his family, headed for higher ground. Others decided to wait it out. Their homes had withstood previous floods, after all.
But this was no ordinary storm. The Weather Service called it a cloudburst: On July 19, 1961, 6 inches of rain fell in four hours starting at about 8:30, following six straight rainy days.
As it poured through narrow Magazine Hollow, the runoff carried away anything that wasn't tied down -- and some things that were. Cars, even homes, were no match for the raging waters. Survivors recall watching houses float past under the glare of lightning bolts and hearing the screams of their neighbors.
By daylight, rescuers began to tally the grim aftermath of the storm. Twenty-two people died in the Kanawha Valley, including nine on Garrison Avenue. An estimated 1,500 people were left homeless as 138 houses were destroyed and 1,374 heavily damaged.
Mayor John Shanklin and John L. Sullivan of the Civil Defense agreed it was the worst disaster they had ever seen. "I've never seen so much devastation," Sullivan said, "and I've seen a lot of disaster areas."
While Garrison Avenue was hard hit, other areas suffered as well -- Sugar Creek, Wertz Avenue, Campbells Creek, Chappell and Mission hollows. Elk Two-Mile might have taken the hardest blow, but creeks flooded from Cedar Grove to Nitro.
The National Guard closed off Garrison the next morning and imposed a curfew for weeks afterward to prevent looting. President John Kennedy provided federal disaster relief.
Seeking higher ground
On the night of the flood, Terry Stone, then 11, was at his home at 145 Garrison, just inches away from the street, with his mom, dad, two brothers and others.
"When the flood started that evening, the water came up above the curb," Stone said. "So we moved over to 174 1/2 Garrison to get away." They joined another group in the two-story home of the Spradlings, away from the road and across the creek.
"We were there a while. It was dark. The only thing you could see was when the lightning flashed. You could see cars and houses moving.
"We were beginning to worry the foundation might go," Stone said. So the group took refuge in a former chicken coop about 20 feet up the hill. The Spradlings had cleaned out and stabilized the 14- by 24-foot building just for that purpose.
But even that wasn't enough. "As the storm got worse, the adults decided it was time to go."
Stone was one of the last ones out. "My grandfather and godfather and stepgrandfather were behind me. What no one expected was a mudslide. I grabbed ahold of a pine shrub.
"The next streak of lightning, the building was over the hill." The chicken coop tumbled down and landed upside-down on the roof of a house at the foot of the hill.
"My dad said it was the wake of a water skier. He could see the mud going around both of us boys. We were covered with mud. From that point we just took off. We went up the hill to the Cunninghams, on Cunningham Drive. They took us in and cleaned us up.
"My grandfather Charlie Jones and godfather Alex Voires were killed when the building went over the hill. My stepgrandfather, Aaron Davis, died a few years later from his injuries.
"My dad took us back the next day. This whole area was totally devastated. It looked like the water bounced off the walls of the hollow. It would hit one house, miss another, hit the next one. We lost quite a few families.
"Anything that was in this hollow ended up at the mouth of the hollow. They had a big old bonfire. Anything that was wood they burned. It looked like a war zone for months afterwards."
Memories, a half-century later
Fifty years after the flood, survivors like Stone are getting hard to find. Many moved away, others died.
For nearly 20 years, the Magazine/Garrison Avenue and Area Reunion Group has been trying to find survivors and their relatives. They hold yearly reunions at the Bigley Avenue ball field and meet once a month at Harding's Restaurant.
Norma Levy, 79, one of the founders of the group, lived with her mom at 274 Garrison until she got married at age 28 and moved away in 1960. The couple was camping in Virginia the night of the flood.
"We got word that there was a flood," she said. Heading back, "We heard Johnny Willey on the radio."
Willey, a Garrison Hollow resident, had spent the night with a friend, going from house to house, rescuing people. In one home, they found a baby all alone, floating on a mattress. He heard a radio station wanted to talk to witnesses and called up the studio. He later learned he had been on the air, live.
"It was horrible," Levy said. "He was giving out names and everything on the radio, scaring everyone half to death."
Once she got past the National Guard, "I saw my mother out in front of the house. My husband went to check on his mother. Their house was gone. I can see it. After all these years, I still get emotional.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- When the heavens opened on the fateful Wednesday evening 50 years ago, people who lived up Magazine Hollow did what they normally do -- they kept an eye on the water pouring down the street.
Some, like young Terry Stone and his family, headed for higher ground. Others decided to wait it out. Their homes had withstood previous floods, after all.
But this was no ordinary storm. The Weather Service called it a cloudburst: On July 19, 1961, 6 inches of rain fell in four hours starting at about 8:30, following six straight rainy days.
As it poured through narrow Magazine Hollow, the runoff carried away anything that wasn't tied down -- and some things that were. Cars, even homes, were no match for the raging waters. Survivors recall watching houses float past under the glare of lightning bolts and hearing the screams of their neighbors.
By daylight, rescuers began to tally the grim aftermath of the storm. Twenty-two people died in the Kanawha Valley, including nine on Garrison Avenue. An estimated 1,500 people were left homeless as 138 houses were destroyed and 1,374 heavily damaged.
Mayor John Shanklin and John L. Sullivan of the Civil Defense agreed it was the worst disaster they had ever seen. "I've never seen so much devastation," Sullivan said, "and I've seen a lot of disaster areas."
While Garrison Avenue was hard hit, other areas suffered as well -- Sugar Creek, Wertz Avenue, Campbells Creek, Chappell and Mission hollows. Elk Two-Mile might have taken the hardest blow, but creeks flooded from Cedar Grove to Nitro.
The National Guard closed off Garrison the next morning and imposed a curfew for weeks afterward to prevent looting. President John Kennedy provided federal disaster relief.
Seeking higher ground
On the night of the flood, Terry Stone, then 11, was at his home at 145 Garrison, just inches away from the street, with his mom, dad, two brothers and others.
"When the flood started that evening, the water came up above the curb," Stone said. "So we moved over to 174 1/2 Garrison to get away." They joined another group in the two-story home of the Spradlings, away from the road and across the creek.
"We were there a while. It was dark. The only thing you could see was when the lightning flashed. You could see cars and houses moving.
"We were beginning to worry the foundation might go," Stone said. So the group took refuge in a former chicken coop about 20 feet up the hill. The Spradlings had cleaned out and stabilized the 14- by 24-foot building just for that purpose.
But even that wasn't enough. "As the storm got worse, the adults decided it was time to go."
Stone was one of the last ones out. "My grandfather and godfather and stepgrandfather were behind me. What no one expected was a mudslide. I grabbed ahold of a pine shrub.
"The next streak of lightning, the building was over the hill." The chicken coop tumbled down and landed upside-down on the roof of a house at the foot of the hill.
"My dad said it was the wake of a water skier. He could see the mud going around both of us boys. We were covered with mud. From that point we just took off. We went up the hill to the Cunninghams, on Cunningham Drive. They took us in and cleaned us up.
"My grandfather Charlie Jones and godfather Alex Voires were killed when the building went over the hill. My stepgrandfather, Aaron Davis, died a few years later from his injuries.
"My dad took us back the next day. This whole area was totally devastated. It looked like the water bounced off the walls of the hollow. It would hit one house, miss another, hit the next one. We lost quite a few families.
"Anything that was in this hollow ended up at the mouth of the hollow. They had a big old bonfire. Anything that was wood they burned. It looked like a war zone for months afterwards."
Memories, a half-century later
Fifty years after the flood, survivors like Stone are getting hard to find. Many moved away, others died.
For nearly 20 years, the Magazine/Garrison Avenue and Area Reunion Group has been trying to find survivors and their relatives. They hold yearly reunions at the Bigley Avenue ball field and meet once a month at Harding's Restaurant.
Norma Levy, 79, one of the founders of the group, lived with her mom at 274 Garrison until she got married at age 28 and moved away in 1960. The couple was camping in Virginia the night of the flood.
"We got word that there was a flood," she said. Heading back, "We heard Johnny Willey on the radio."
Willey, a Garrison Hollow resident, had spent the night with a friend, going from house to house, rescuing people. In one home, they found a baby all alone, floating on a mattress. He heard a radio station wanted to talk to witnesses and called up the studio. He later learned he had been on the air, live.
"It was horrible," Levy said. "He was giving out names and everything on the radio, scaring everyone half to death."
Once she got past the National Guard, "I saw my mother out in front of the house. My husband went to check on his mother. Their house was gone. I can see it. After all these years, I still get emotional.
"We can't find the families of the nine people who died on our street," she said. "We're trying now to find the stories of the people who survived."
Several survivors gathered at the ball field recently to meet with a Gazette reporter, including Opal Bostic, 89. Bostic, a former cook at Mount Ovas Elementary, the neighborhood school up on Mary Street, lives at 113 Garrison.
"We were right there, we stood there, watched people, houses, cars, everything. I had to get out of my house and go up to my mother's. It was a little higher. My house, it was gone -- everything.
"My husband came down the next day and found bodies."
Bostic discovered the body of one of the youngest victims, 8-year-old Richard Byers. "It felt like the crack of lightning when I found him. It was terrible. We called the fire department. My mom gave them a new blanket to wrap him in."
Like Levy, Beatrice Taylor Gandy moved out of the hollow a year before the flood.
"My father, Alfred G. Taylor, he lived at 62 Garrison Ave., directly across the street from four of the people that were killed -- two plus two. One house was Helen Givens and her niece [Sherry, 8]. She was visiting her. And the house right beside, the Saddlers, mother and daughter," Elma and Marcia Ann, 7.
"My father had a basement under the house. He was trying to get stuff from the basement to the first floor. When he looked up, his car was going. So he had to stay in the house. There was nothing he could do. Water was up to his hip in the street.
"He saw the three houses go down the street, and the women screaming. The three houses washed up against Paul's store."
Paul Cassis' grocery, at the corner of Crescent Road, stood on sturdy steel beams that straddled the creek. Rescue workers later pulled victims from the wreckage that piled up against the store.
"Helen Givens' son, Buddy Givens, came wading across the street," Gandy said. "He asked, 'Do you know what happened to my mother?' Helen's daughter, Jolene, survived in the house." She floated with the house down to Paul's grocery. "Young men heard her scream. They got her out."
New storm drain, same problems
More than a dozen years after the flood, contractors installed a storm drain or culvert system in the lower end of the hollow, financed by a 1972 bond levy. It starts near Rockaway Road, where a massive slanting grate guards the opening to a corrugated steel pipe eight feet in diameter.
"It splits into two 72-inch pipes," City Engineer Chris Knox said. "Then it opens up just before the Interstate. The culvert runs mostly under the road, with inlets on both sides for small tributaries," Knox said.
The idea is to capture storm runoff and channel it underground, away from vulnerable homes.
But even before it was completed, residents doubted whether it was large enough to do the job. With good reason, it turns out. The hollow flooded in 1996 and twice more in 2003.
The June 2003 flood, just as Mayor Danny Jones took his initial oath of office, washed out a 20-foot section of the culvert, Knox said. Jones asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for help that August.
The Corps started a study the next year, Knox said, "to see if anything could be done -- structural or nonstructural." A structural solution means increasing the size of storm drains, he said; nonstructural means raising homes out of the flood plain.
"It was determined if we installed another 96-inch pipe, it would not handle the rainfall of the '61 or the '03 flood. There's not room for that anyway. So structurally there was no alternative to prevent the flood."
The Corps determined that 42 of 88 homes in the hollow were in the 1,000-year flood zone. The cost of raising those homes, at $150,000 per home plus interest, totaled about $6.7 million.
Knox said he's not sure about the status of study now. "I think there's still a possibility to apply for federal funding."
In the meantime, the existing culvert is starting to rust out. City engineers are looking at ways to fix it, maybe with a liner, for the next 15 years.
That's probably little comfort to families who worry whenever it rains.
"We have that problem in other areas of the city," said Tom Elkins, the city's storm water engineer. "It's a fact of life. With a 500-year flood, there's nothing you can do, short of those people not living there."
Having surviving the flood, Stone now lives on top of a mountain. "My wife will tell you, I won't live in a hollow. I won't live [near] a creek." The memories haunt him.
"My wife put in one of those sound systems -- you know, ocean waves. It had storm sound. I'd hear that thunder and hair would stand up on the back of my neck. Years later ... it's something you don't forget."
***
A memorial service for flood victims of the 1961 Garrison Avenue flood will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the upper Bigley Avenue ball field. The service will be followed by a reunion. Call 304-344-4991 for information.
Reach Jim Balow at ba...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5102.
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