By Michelle James
Register-Herald Reporter
BECKLEY — At about 11 p.m. Friday night, Stacey Blazer sent her husband John outside to bring in Biscuit, the family dog, after noticing water from nearby Beaver Creek was moving into her back yard.
The creek continued to rise in the few minutes John was outside and by 11:30, the Violet Lane home had become part of the creek.
“It (water) came in quick and we had to get to the attic as fast as we could,” Blazer said.
Stacey, John and their sons, 12-year-old Josh and 9-year-old Clay, waded through chest-high water and hoisted each other up through a small opening located in a bedroom closet.
The family of four would remain in the dark, windowless attic for the next 12 hours as water roared through their house, knocking down anything in its way.
The Blazers were in contact with 911 several times throughout the night as they waited in the attic, wondering if the water would eventually catch up with them.
Each time they called, they were told rescuers were on their way.
“We could hear the boats and hear people but no one came,” Stacey Blazer said.
Finally, at about noon Saturday, a family friend called and said he had parked his car on nearby Tank Branch Road and was going to walk down the side of the mountain to help them out.
Shortly thereafter, the Blazers made their way out of their flooded house, up the side of the mountain and then to Stacey’s father’s home in Beckley.
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Just across the street from the Blazer’s, Boots Dilley and her sister were dealing with the worst flooding they had ever seen.
Dilley, who now lives in Huntington but was in town visiting, said her father bought the house in 1932, and in the years she can remember, the creek had never gone higher than midway up their front porch steps.
Friday night, however, it went knee-high throughout the bottom floor.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said.
When the sisters saw water entering their house, Dilley said they began carrying pictures, important papers and small furniture to the second floor.
At about 4 a.m., 30 minutes after the went to bed, Dilley said they heard two men calling from downstairs, asking if anyone was inside the house.
“They told us to get a change of clothes, that we had two minutes because they had to rescue other people, too,” she said.
When they got downstairs, Dilley said they stepped directly onto a rescue boat.
“It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Dilley said.
The boat took them to the end of the street, where they were placed on a van, which then headed for a motel off of Airport Road.
Halfway to the motel, however, Dilley said the driver of the van received radio notification that the boat they had just been on had capsized and that one of the rescuers had been swept under water and was missing.
Dilley said they then went back to the scene so the driver could assist in the search for the rescuer.
As of Sunday night, the Glasgow Volunteer firefighter was still missing. Dilley said she is thankful that she and her sister made it off the boat before it capsized, but said she cannot stop thinking about the missing volunteer.
“I wonder which one it was,” she said, explaining that one in particular had shaken her hand and wished her luck. “They were all fantastic, really nice guys.”
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On Sunday, workers removed carpeting and were drying the hardwood floors in the home Dilley and her sister own.
Although there is much work to be done, Dilley said things will be “OK.”
“We’ll get it all cleaned up sooner or later,” she said. “It could have been a lot worse.”
Life is less certain for the Blazers however, as they don’t yet know if they will return to their rental house.
Sunday, the family returned to the home to pick up clothes before heading back to Stacey’s dad’s. Biscuit, who rode out the flood on the living room couch and Buster, the big family cat who stayed calmly on the top bunk in the boys’ room, will stay with a relative for a while.
The family did not have renter’s insurance on their home but Stacey said the most important thing is not what was lost, but instead what was saved.
“The most important thing is that we’re all OK,” she said. “You can replace possessions, but not each other.”
— E-mail: mjames@register-herald.com
