PARSONS, W.Va. — Thirty-years ago this week thousands of West Virginia residents found themselves suddenly homeless. The highest flood water in history wiped out entire communities as it raged through the Potomac Highlands and northern and central West Virginia. Tom Felton of Parsons was one of the many who had nothing left.
“Shaver’s Fork was on one side of me and the Black Fork was on the other side and at one point it was one continuous body of water,” he recalled on Wednesday’s MetroNews Talkline on the 30th anniversary of the 1985 flood.
Felton noted there was no warning at all about the magnitude of the flood, but when he saw the water rising he left his home and couldn’t get back for a couple of days.
“The next day I went back to town and couldn’t get to my house. I went up on the hill where I could look down and it looked like my house was gone,” he said. “When the water receded I was able to walk over and it was all gone. The front porch was all that was left.”
The only possessions he was able to recover were his dishes which were in a neat pile about 200 yards from his home along the riverbank and some friends found one of his guns.
“Later on they did find my hunting rifle, some neighbors were there and found it,” he said. “It needed some work, but was salvageable and I still have it today.”
Felton at the time worked for the Tucker County Health Department. Although he was a victim, he also became part of the response because of his position. He was the one who got word of the infamous cow lodged under the bridge over the Cheat River at St. George. A picture of the cow amid flood debris, high above the normal river level, became one of the iconic memories of the flood.
“I walked out on those girders underneath the bridge to try and get the cow out,” he said. “It was wedged under there so tight among the debris I couldn’t budge it.”
He returned two days later with the National Guard. Guard members were able to finally remove the carcass from its lofty perch after several hours of work.
Felton recalled the damage and his feelings as he looked over his home town.
“It was just unreal, you just couldn’t believe it,” he said. “You just started thinking how is this town and how are these people going to recover from this catastrophe because that’s what it was.”
Felton eventually built back on the same location with the help of a group of Mennonite builders who came into the area from the Dakotas and Canada to help with flood relief. During subsequent yeas his home incurred high water twice more, but not nearly to degree of the 1985 flood before he sold the home and moved to higher ground.
Today he said when you travel through Parsons the physical damage left from the 1985 flood is largely gone, but the economic damage is still evident. He said in many ways economically the town never recovered as many moved away and never returned.