1engineer
Moderator
The Story:
This past Thursday, some parts of WV received 10" of rain in 8 hours. Needless to say there were devastating floods. So far the death toll is at 26 and a neighboring county, the one my wife's parents live in, has 15 of those 26 deaths. It was hit hard. They called us Thursday evening (they are in their mid 80's) and told us the water was up to their property. They live on a hill so I was not too worried for their safety but if the water was at their property that meant it had to be several feet deep in town! Turned out it was EIGHT feet deep on Main Street. Not good.
We woke up Friday morning with two objectives: Get her parents out of there (no power, no water, no sewer, etc) and take supplies up to all those who needed it. We called a friend who owns the local Chick Filet and it turned out he was making 1,000 sandwiches to take to the flooded areas. I told him our plan and we got 100 to take with us. We then went to Sam's and got enough food and water to cover 100 people for 24 hours. That equates to 800 bottles of water, several jars of peanut butter, lots of canned tuna and bread, plates, honey buns, etc. We had the 4Runner loaded down with about 1,000 lbs of food.
The town is about 30 miles away and it was still pouring the rain when we got there at 11:00 am, but not near as hard as the day before. We found we could get to the National Guard unit on one side of town but the main roads in to town were only accessible by boat and HumVee. The water had receded to about 3 1/2 feet by then. We dropped the food and water at the National Guard and a medical clinic being used as a shelter but we still needed to get to her parents on the other side of town. We know the area and decided to take a dirt road over a mountain and drop in on the back side of town to check out the situation there. The dirt road is about 8 1/2 miles long and was washed out in several places. One place we got through and noticed a few vehicles behind that were hesitant to cross. We got out and stacked rock for 20 minutes or so until the other guys could get through too. We got down to about 1,000 feet from her parent's home and the water was still about 3 feet deep. Too deep I decided so we sat. And sat. After waiting about three hours it had got down to about 2-2 1/2 feet and we took off, picked them up and hightailed it back home.
The flooding in WV is terrible right now. There are a lot of people who have lost everything. There are a lot of organizations putting relief efforts together so if you can, give a few bucks or a case of water or something.
The whole point of my post here is the 4Runner did the job Friday. It hauled 1,000 lbs of food and water and then it took off over the mountain to get there. It then went through 30" of water for about 300 feet until we could go on up to the parents house. It did good. Now, we took pics but weren't really worried about how good they were. Here are a few with the 4Runner:
1. Setting level at the National Guard
2. The stuff that made it level!
3. The 8 1/2 mile dirt road
4. A Jeep straddling the wash where we stacked rock
5. The water.
6. Driving through the water
This past Thursday, some parts of WV received 10" of rain in 8 hours. Needless to say there were devastating floods. So far the death toll is at 26 and a neighboring county, the one my wife's parents live in, has 15 of those 26 deaths. It was hit hard. They called us Thursday evening (they are in their mid 80's) and told us the water was up to their property. They live on a hill so I was not too worried for their safety but if the water was at their property that meant it had to be several feet deep in town! Turned out it was EIGHT feet deep on Main Street. Not good.
We woke up Friday morning with two objectives: Get her parents out of there (no power, no water, no sewer, etc) and take supplies up to all those who needed it. We called a friend who owns the local Chick Filet and it turned out he was making 1,000 sandwiches to take to the flooded areas. I told him our plan and we got 100 to take with us. We then went to Sam's and got enough food and water to cover 100 people for 24 hours. That equates to 800 bottles of water, several jars of peanut butter, lots of canned tuna and bread, plates, honey buns, etc. We had the 4Runner loaded down with about 1,000 lbs of food.
The town is about 30 miles away and it was still pouring the rain when we got there at 11:00 am, but not near as hard as the day before. We found we could get to the National Guard unit on one side of town but the main roads in to town were only accessible by boat and HumVee. The water had receded to about 3 1/2 feet by then. We dropped the food and water at the National Guard and a medical clinic being used as a shelter but we still needed to get to her parents on the other side of town. We know the area and decided to take a dirt road over a mountain and drop in on the back side of town to check out the situation there. The dirt road is about 8 1/2 miles long and was washed out in several places. One place we got through and noticed a few vehicles behind that were hesitant to cross. We got out and stacked rock for 20 minutes or so until the other guys could get through too. We got down to about 1,000 feet from her parent's home and the water was still about 3 feet deep. Too deep I decided so we sat. And sat. After waiting about three hours it had got down to about 2-2 1/2 feet and we took off, picked them up and hightailed it back home.
The flooding in WV is terrible right now. There are a lot of people who have lost everything. There are a lot of organizations putting relief efforts together so if you can, give a few bucks or a case of water or something.
The whole point of my post here is the 4Runner did the job Friday. It hauled 1,000 lbs of food and water and then it took off over the mountain to get there. It then went through 30" of water for about 300 feet until we could go on up to the parents house. It did good. Now, we took pics but weren't really worried about how good they were. Here are a few with the 4Runner:
1. Setting level at the National Guard
2. The stuff that made it level!
3. The 8 1/2 mile dirt road
4. A Jeep straddling the wash where we stacked rock
5. The water.
6. Driving through the water
