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  • From: Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] A raging flood
  • Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:24:40 -0700

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.





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