BRUSHY FORK ROAD, W.Va. — Thirty-year respected Buckhannon-area automobile detailer Rodney Rovello looked in his backyard a few days after the flood that hit last Tuesday and it was almost unrecognizable.
Rovello’s multi-stalled garage that he used to run his business, R & J’s Auto Specialties, was crumpled up like someone had stepped on a tin can. His wash bay was several hundred feet from its original location and the automobiles he was working on were gone, most of them swept down swollen Brushy Fork.
Rovello told MetroNews he has questions without answers.
“That’s the thing. I look at it and look at the devastation out there,” his voice trailing off. “What do I do? Where do I start? Almost 60-years-old and starting over? We owe all of 27 months on this house. I worked all my life for this and in a blink of an eye it’s gone.
It came so quickly
Rovello’s house is about 40 yards from Brushy Fork. The creek is normally about six feet wide or less but last Tuesday when the area got 5.5 inches of rain in 39 minutes it became a raging river.
Rovello had taken a couple of workers home to Buckhannon when it started raining. He returned 20 minutes later and everything had changed. There was five feet of water waiting for him.
“It was really shocking, terrifying. We couldn’t get to my daughter, daughter-in-law, grandbabies. Words cannot express how catastrophic it was,” he said.
Rovello’s son-in-law, Jonathan McDaniels, works at R & J’s and lives just a few hundred feet down Brushy Fork Road from his father-in-law. He said he didn’t think much of the rain at first but then things changed.
“The power went out at six (6 p.m.) and I started seeing coolers, refrigerators, freezers and water tanks all floating down (Brushy Fork) and within 10 minutes we were in trouble real fast,” McDaniels told MetroNews.
This flood victim on Brushy Fork on Upshur Co gave me a tour of his home pic.twitter.com/DDu3TIzpST
— Jeff Jenkins (@JeffJenkinsMN) July 24, 2026
He and his wife started to try and get some things to higher ground but he began to believe this much water could be life-threatening.
“We realized we had to get out of the house. I threw my son in the truck (drove it to higher ground) and then came back for my wife and daughter. It’s one in three times in my life that I’ve been scared,” McDaniels said.
Rodney’s son Josh Rovello works in Buckhannon. He rushed home when the hard rain began but couldn’t make it all of the way home because the nearby bridge was blocked with water and debris.
His family was safe in an upstairs section of his house but everything downstairs was destroyed.
“I got five foot of water in my house, eight foot in my garage,” the younger Rovello said. “The back of my house blew out. My garage blew out.”
Charlotte Smith has lived in the community for more than 56 years. She said not even the 1985 flood had water like this.
She and her husband grabbed their wills and were ready to leave Tuesday but the water stopped rising on the top step going down to her basement. Her basement got flooded but it didn’t get into her upstairs. She now has the only working bathroom in the community. She’s sharing it with neighbors.
Help was quick to arrive
Help has poured into Brushy Fork Road.
Bill Lake owns Lake Lumber & Fence Company in the Webster County community of Hacker Valley. He’s friends with the Rovellos. He brought a crew in to begin stripping Rodney’s house of what the flood left behind. By Friday the walls were down to the studs and the floors to the subfloors.
“It got right at 22 inches in their entire home. It’s all ruined,” he said.
Lake worries about the foundation because it appears the force of the water moved the house slightly.
Lake said there’s nothing more destructive than a flood.
“Unless you’ve experienced it you just can’t understand,” he said. “You just can’t understand the force of water.”
There’s been other help to.
Those that Rovello does auto detailing for, like car dealers, have stopped by every day with food and water. Monongalia County sheriff’s deputies, in Upshur County helping out, were there Friday with some more cleaning supplies.
“We’ve bene blessed,” Rodney said. “We have great friends. The outpouring of the community, supplies, water and food, it’s has just been great. I can’t say enough.”
What’s next?
The families along Brushy Fork have insurance but not flood insurance. That’s the hard part Josh Rovello said.
“Thank God for family and good friends. It really does bring out the true friends and family. You can’t rely on the insurance company. Your vehicles are covered but now I need it for my house and it’s like ‘see ya later,'” he said. “It’s frustrating. I guess we regroup, the family is stronger than ever and rebuild everything I guess.”
McDaniels is hopeful.
“The Lord will provide. This is just stuff,” he said. “We’re all alive and we’re going to build it bigger and better, that’s all I can say.”
Rodney Rovello still has those questions to answer. What do I do? Where do I start? It sounds like he’s beginning to get those answers.
“I have great guys working for me. They’ve been right here working (after the flood) and I told them I would take care of them but they said it was time for them to take care of me,” he said, choking back tears. “We’ll survive. We’ll make it.”