Disaster left mark on county

Web posted October 12, 2000

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 Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance changes

By Heidi Coryell
Staff Writer

Rae's Creek wreaked havoc at the Augusta National in 1990. The creek is being included in a flood study by the Army Corps of Engineers. Below, some residents made the best of the high waters. FILE/STAFF

Ten years ago today, 29-year-old Shirley Nelson and her 23-year-old sister Malinda awoke to the sound of thunder.

It was still dark when the sisters set out from their Wrens home on the 17-mile trip to work in a Gibson, Ga., factory. It was raining, but - Malinda recalled a decade later - ``It was more like a misty rain. I never remember it raining real hard.''

As their Chevrolet Celebrity rounded a curve on Kings Mill Road, up ahead appeared what looked like a puddle.

That ``puddle'' was what was left of Kings Mill Bridge, which had washed away overnight in a flash flood.

The car plunged in and was swept up in the current.

``I think I was thrown out,'' Malinda said, remembering being rescued but little else.

Shirley never made it out of the car.

``She was a friendly person,'' Malinda Nelson said softly, eyes downcast. ``If she had, you had.''

Shirley Nelson was one of four people who died the morning of Oct. 12, 1990, when two tropical storms - Marco and Klaus - converged over Augusta for three days, dumping about 15 inches of rain. The four-county region was declared a national disaster area in the following days.

Kings Mill Road had never flooded before, and it has not flooded in the decade since, the Nelson family says.

The flood of 1990 has gone down in history as one of Augusta's worst. But officials say if a storm of similar proportions were to hit today, flood maps indicate that residents likely would not fare any better than they did a decade ago.

``We've done a lot of drainage improvements, but we've also had a lot of development,'' said Terri Turner, assistant zoning and development administrator for Augusta-Richmond County Planning and Zoning Commission. ``Maybe one day that will decrease, but it seems to stay pretty level.''

Residents improvised to navigate Augusta's streets in 1990 when 15 inches of rain fell in three days. JEFF JANOWSKI/STAFF

For every new detention pond and every improved creek channel, there has been just as much residential or commercial development, Ms. Turner said. For every subdivision where the impact of flooding has been reduced, the maps show another that has become more susceptible.

``I would say we're doing a balancing act.''

Loss of life

As the Nelson sisters' car sank in the swift water that had overtaken Kings Mill Road, their neighbors from across the street - husband and wife Johnny and Johnnie Mae Hobbs - drove into the same washed-out section of the street.

Within moments, Mrs. Hobbs passed out. Grabbing onto a crumbling embankment with one hand and his unconscious wife with the other, Mr. Hobbs clung to his wife as the water continued to rise.

``I held her for a long time,'' he told newspaper reporters a decade ago.

``When the next car came into the water, I think everything happened then,'' he said. ``She just got washed away from me.''

Guy Dean, an 80-year-old retired physician, died after his car plunged into 5-foot-deep water on Hardy McManus Road in Columbia County. Bobby Gene Walker, 53, of Swainsboro drowned in his car after it veered off U.S. Highway 1 in Jefferson County and landed in a swollen creek.

But their stories were lost amid the chaos and mayhem that accompanied the $150 million in property and crop damage.

In Richmond County alone, 40 roads flooded that day. More than 15,000 people were without power. The city was under a boil-water advisory for four days.

``People don't understand that when a storm hits, that 60 to 70 percent of the associated deaths are due to inland flooding,'' said Dave Dlugolenski, Richmond County Emergency Management Agency director. ``They think, it can't happen to me.''

Property loss

Mary Parham knows about bad circumstance.

Two years before her Castlewood Drive home was nearly destroyed in the flood of 1990, her father was killed in a car accident on Wrightsboro Road. The next year, in 1989, she found her mother robbed and murdered in her east Augusta home.

But when Ms. Parham talks about the tragedies in her life, the Oct. 12 flood ranks near the top of her list.

``I don't guess I'll ever really heal from it,'' she said. ``It's like saying I could heal from the fact that my mother was murdered. It's just one of those things that stays with you.''

Even though the October flood wasn't the first time her home had been infiltrated by rising water, it would be the last time she lived there to see it. She is one of eight Richmond County residents on a repetitive-loss list to have their homes purchased by the county with federal and local funds.

``We had planned to stay there indefinitely,'' Ms. Parham said. ``When you see your furniture floating, like pianos and beds ... . We had stuff just floating around in the house. It was devastating, to say the least.''

Malinda Nelson's sister, Shirley, drowned in 1990 after their car was washed away in the flood.

It was more than a week before she could even go back to her house to see the damage. And 10 years later she says she still takes anti-depressants to cope with the pain of losing almost everything she owned, including most of the pictures and mementos of her dead parents.

``You feel kind of ashamed,'' she said. ``It had happened two or three times before, but we had done all types of things to stop the water. We raised the house three feet, waterproofed it. I was so sure at that point that we had gotten rid of the problem.''

Repairing loss

During the past 10 years, hundreds of improvements have been made to drains and sewers throughout Richmond County. Creek beds have been deepened and widened. Several regional detention ponds, which incorporate a series of drainage pipes and release mechanisms, have been strategically placed to prevent developed areas from being overrun with water during storm events.

Augusta commissioners are set to adopt Tuesday the most stringent set of flood-damage prevention ordinances to date. The new codes require that homes in flood-prone areas be built 3 feet above the flood plain. It prohibits the mass clearing of trees in the flood plain, and the updated ordinance does not allow waste-disposal systems in flood hazard areas.

There also have been $70 million in drainage-related improvements made in Richmond County during the past decade.

But more than $77 million in drainage problems have yet to be addressed. A $59 million general obligation bond that failed in a special election last month would have addressed more than two-thirds of those projects.

The Army Corps of Engineers also is studying several Augusta-area creek basins, including Rae's and Rocky creeks.

``We're trying to come up with a solution to reduce flooding,'' said Jim Parker, spokesman for the Corps. ``You're not going to eliminate all local flooding problems in the area, but we're trying to come up with a plan that will reduce the frequency.''

Click on graphic for larger image.

The flood of 1990 was problematic in Richmond County largely because much of the rain was concentrated over the downtown area, which caused the Augusta Canal to flood city streets.

Although such storms are unusual for inland cities, localized flooding is somewhat common, Mr. Parker said.

``What I think a lot of people are not aware of is that most of the flooding that occurs in Augusta is absent of anything that might come from the river,'' he said. ``It's local drainage problems, and that's because of increased development and obstruction to streams.''

Ordinance changes

Richmond County's Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance, which regulates development in flood-prone portions of the county, has gone through several revisions in the past 20 years. Here are a few examples of how the ordinance has evolved:

1980: Sanitary and utility systems have to be flood-proofed, and structures located in the special flood hazard area have to be built 1 foot above the 100-year flood elevation.

1987: The ordinance gets more specific about how structures must be built in the flood hazard area and is extended to apply to areas near uncharted streams and creeks.

1991: Structures in the special flood hazard area now must be built 2 feet above the 100-year flood elevation. A large tract of land that contains more than an acre of special flood hazard zone must comply with flood ordinance regulations.

Reach Heidi Coryell at (706) 823-3215.

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