Subject: Re: Thanks, Dave!
From: <tale@dd.org>
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 04:01:15 -0400

Mr. Bill writes:

>> I'm sure Oompah Dave, snug and warm going home in his 4wd Subaru while
>> listening to his favorite CDs, was probably thinking, "Those poor
>> suckers..."


I left 10 minutes too late.  Folks who said they left at 8:30 said
they got out of Minden, whereas I left at 8:40 and was trapped there
until 3pm when the water lowered just enough on a bridge that had not
been completely demolished so that I could come back to ACE.  Based on
the scant information that was coming to us down there, I fully
expected that the bulk of the group would still be at ACE.  We had
learned from an ACE employee who came down that the Wonderland Road
(from near the ACE stables) was closed too, so with more storms in the
forecast through Tuesday, the whole town basically expected to be
stuck there until Wednesday at the soonest.  Even emergency vehicles
were not able to get to the town, until a lone Humvee with just two
men showed up.  Didn't really make a difference to the situation down
there.

One guy who lived there 35 years told me it was the worst he's ever
seen it.  He's had water up on his lawn before, but this time it
nearly completely covered his pickup and was a foot over the door
sill.  Getting people out of their flooded homes was a real challenge
for the townspeople, who had row boats but no motors to go against the
swift current.  One boat flipped over with three kids in it (all
non-swimmers, and one without a life vest) and the drama was high as
the able bodied men rushed to save them.  Fortunately, they all were.

Many vehicles were deep in water, and two cars floated down the flood
waters and wedged themselves under a bridge.  (The bridge I needed to
cross to get back to ACE.)  Other bridges were demolished.  The road
down from Oak Hill was reportedly blocked by a mountain slide.

I thought about Bill Jennings saying how some water got into his tent,
which kind of sucked for him, but it was nothing compared to houses
that had three feet of water in the living room.  One fellow had
reportedly recently done $34,000 dollars of renovations, and had a new
(uninsured) Mustang in his garage.

I took some very interesting pictures, but this dialup connection is
too slow to transfer them to my web site, so I'll do it tomorrow from
the office and send the URLs after they're up.