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[Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

We are in the middle of a raging flood equalled only by the 1985 
flood---all our buildings are above the flood plain---not much but 
sufficiently.  There are eleven mud-slides blocking travel on Highway 
311, our main road out to fifteen-miles away Roanoke.
I suspect downtown Roanoke is largely under water. Our private lake 
forty feet above the valley floor has a couple feet of water pouring 
over the entire length of a three hundred foot dam.  I think the dam 
will hold.

We are beginning to lose electric power---I expected that---tree roots 
cannot hold in soupy soil.  Power would have vanished last night if the 
rain were accompanied by any wind.

Our private road out to the winding tertiary blacktop has no gravel at 
all---scoured down to bedrock.  Fortunately there is bedrock to get out 
on after the flood subsides.  It will be rough, but passable,  at least 
for the four-wheel-drive pickup.  I am uneasy about the road to the West 
of the house and adjacent to the West barn.  There have been trainloads 
of rock dumped on the creek bank to stabilize it, but we would need 
Volkswagon-sized rock, not up to two-foot diameter rock to protect the road.

Smaller rocks will go tumbling downstream.
My two resident and one week-end neighbors using it as a right-of-way 
may have to drive up the other side of the barn to get out---I think the 
right-of-way road will vanish on the creekside adjacent to the barn.