CLENDENIN, W.Va. — Valley View Drive near Queen Shoals was described by the Division of Highways as the most damaged road in the state from the 2016 flood. Today, the road has been rerouted, resurfaced, and three bridges replaced. However, Terry Young, who lives beside one of those bridges destroyed in the high water, wonders just how much better things are.
“They just paved the rest of the way up the hollow, but they finished up somewhere around December or January,” Young said. “We’re still dealing with things. You can’t run off the berm of this road, you’ll tear the bottom out of your vehicle.”
As Young stood in his yard and looked over the rebuilt roadway, the frustration in his voice was as evident as it was a year ago when MetroNews met him carrying ruined belongings form his house into the yard.
“They were mad because I went over their head to get some barriers moved,” said Young of his fight with the DOH during the reconstruction process. “They made it one way out and that was eight miles out in the other direction. We had no emergency route for over two months.”
Looking at the new bridge across the creek in front of his home, Young bristled. The original plans he claims were to straighten out the bridge to eliminate a series of curves on the bridge approach. However, that’s not how the final product turned out.
“The shoved it over here on me right into my yard,” he explained. “That wing wall was poured 16 inches off the ground and it was supposed to go toward that tree so that when water came down it would glance back up under the bridge. Instead, they turned it so the water will come right over here on this bowl they left me in.”
Young received some assistance from FEMA, but admitted it wasn’t nearly enough to cover the cost of what was lost.
“They paid us for the one part of the house, but that was it,” he said. “We have a utility room here where my wife and I do art work, but because it had a garage door they called it a garage and wouldn’t pay anything for that. It also didn’t cover the cost of the drains or anything like that.”
Young and his wife did all of the restoration to their home on their own.
“We tore the dry wall off four feet up and we took creek rock and put them along the wall four feet up,” he said. “We’re ready for her again if she wants to come.”
A year ago, when MetroNews visited the area, Young’s boat, vehicles, and a mortar machine were strewn in heaps of debris up and down the hollow. The road was gone and the creek was running where the road used to be.
“From here to the mouth of the hollow for the next mile it was like a river bed,” Young recalled. “The boat went to salvage, but the cars and most of the vehicles are piled up right over there.”
Today, after a lot of excavation work, the creek is back in its banks, the road is back in place, and you can see a part of Young’s mortar machine hanging out of the bank near the mouth of the hollow. He considers it a monument to his aggravation with the recovery and the DOH. Although a year has passed, for Young and his wife, the struggle to get back to where they were isn’t much closer than it was when the water rose in 2016.
“It ain’t been good,” he said. “Just a year later, that’s about all.”