But Irene’s approach the last few days had me thinking about September 1996, and dealing with the remnants of Hurricane Fran. Actually, we had a big snowstorm the previous winter that was followed by serious flooding, so I wonder if these things do in fact run in cycles.
We were about six months into the regime change at the Page News and Courier when Fran struck, but certain things transcend work environments, poor or not, and covering a big story is definitely one of them. I grabbed my camera about 10 a.m. that Friday and walked to the office, crossing the Main Street bridge over Hawksbill Creek and getting a last look at two buildings that would be part of the waterway about six hours later.
At some point, my compatriot at the paper, Jeb Caudell; WLCC news director Jeff Stapleton and I piled into Jeb’s pickup and surveyed the damage just north of Luray. We were probably out for an hour or so, I remember going out to Jim Logan’s place to see how they were doing out there and then not being able to take U.S. 211 back into Luray because the Hawksbill had already left its banks and flooded Bulldog Field. Jeb got a three-inch-long gash on his arm from a Brookside sign he wanted to use to brace himself as he got one last photo before we used Collins Avenue to get back into town.
But we were shocked…and had to stop…when we could see the football stadium below us was under nine feet of water. After taking more photos, we went to Jeb’s townhouse, next to Hardees, which appeared to be one of the few places in town that still had power. Since the cable was out, we thought we’d try to head south toward Stanley and get more photos, but the creek had left us unable to get out of town. The Main Street bridge was underwater and some loose propane tanks caused police to close the bypass, so we were stuck in town.
The next few hours are a blur. With the power out, we had just one working phone at the Page News. Eventually, the creek went down enough that police allowed me to cross the Main Street bridge and get home about 6 p.m. Within another hour, the power was actually back (one of the great things about living on the main drag). Cable was out until Sunday, but it was restored just in time for the Redskins’ game.
Jeff, Larry and I actually went to Baltimore on Saturday to see the Orioles and Angels, having to use Browntown Road as a detour around the South Fork of the Shenandoah River, which had flooded U.S. 340. So it was not until Sunday afternoon that the true damage outside of Luray became apparent to me.
About lunchtime, while waiting for the Redskins game to start, I got a call from Gov. George Allen’s press secretary, Ken Stroupe, a Stanley native. He said the governor would be flying into Page County later in the afternoon and they would keep me up to date on where to meet up with them. They wanted to land the helicopter at Bulldog Field, but it was still under water, so instead the chose to stop at Mountain View Parks, a pair of private softball fields on the north end of Stanley. There, Jeff and I met up with the governor, two Page County supervisors and a pool cameraman from Channel 12. Escorted by a couple of state police cars, we went back into Pine Grove, where the destruction wreaked by the Hawksbill, fed by a foot of rain up in Shenandoah National Park, was amazing.I took a few photos of the governor walking along a rocky ledge to get to the front porch of one family. By this time I was also getting a little antsy since I was due at the radio station at 6 p.m., even though the transmitter had been without power for the past two days.
When we got back to Stanley, I headed back up Leakesville Road and got to WLCC in time to relieve Larry. Most of the next five-plus hours was spent answering the phone. “Yes, Wrangler is closed. No, I don’t know when we’ll be back on the air.” About 11:30, they got the power back to the transmitter, so we went commercial-free for the next two and half hours passing along boil water advisories, school closings and the number for FEMA. By 2 a.m., I signed off and went by the emergency operations center for one last conversation before heading home.
It was quite a storm, and we had stories in the weeks and months to follow, but there’s nothing like covering spot news. Sometimes I miss the thrill, which is why it was a blast (I’m sorry) when that guy tried to blowup his house in Stephens City about five years ago.
On the other hand, I’m happy to let the folks in D.C. take the lead on this one.
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