Midvale - August 19, 1969 A.D.

[NW Mailing List]

I and my brother-in-law were caught in the storm driving from Scottsville on the James River to Rockfish Gap (Afton Mountain) on our way to pick up some freight at the Smith trucking terminal in Verona.  I have never been so frightened in my life.  Remember--no one predicted this or even knew it was coming.  We thought it was just a bad line of thunderstorms.  I have never before or since seen rain falling so hard that there was 4-6" of water in the roadway at the crest of hills!  Kudzu was sloughing off the banks in huge rafts.  When we crested Afton Mountain the view was eerie.  The air being pushed up the mountain from the valley side was perfectly clear with a ceiling several thousand feet up.  At the mountain crest the water vapor condensed out to form a wall of white that filled the sky to the east with crazy roiling shapes.  It was like something you see now in special effects in movies about world-ending natural disasters.  Of course, the world did end for several hundred people that night in Virginia.  We did make it to Verona and back across the mountain to Charlottesville.  After we got into Charlottesville the state police closed every road leading out of the city and we had to spend the night at the Monticello Hotel.  The next morning we were able to get out of town, but every time we turned south to try to cross the James River roads were blocked by flooding creeks.  Finally, we made a mad dash for Richmond and managed to beat the floodwaters before all the bridges in Richmond were closed and then drove back west to Farmville.  I don't think Farmville had gotten a drop of rain!

I know there is no railroad-related info here, but just had to tell what it was like to be in the middle of this monster.  For those who think that the superlatives that are bandied about concerning this storm are just tall tales (most rain in three hours in world history, for example), I can assure you that they are not.

Thanks,

Sam Putney


  
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: NW Mailing List 
  To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org 
  Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 9:16 AM
  Subject: Re: Midvale - August 19, 1969 A.D.





  En route to Lynchburg on the Southern Crescent,  the trainman told
  me he'd been on No. 47 the night of August 19.  He said the rain
  was coming down so hard, it was conforming to the fluted sides
  of the sleeping cars and looking from the rear of the train, the rain
  was coming off in streams..

  Some time later, he was on the northbound Crescent that derailed
  on a curve north of Shipman account overspeed.  He survived the
  derailment, but afterward, he had a heart attack and died on site.
                                            Harry Bundy 


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