When Ruth Nicholas stepped outside the Gauley Bridge Health Center to check water levels on the rolling New River one last time Monday evening, she heard more than the sound of the rapidly passing river.
“I heard somebody screaming ‘Help!’” the clinic manager said, “so I walked out in the middle of the patio and there was this guy in the middle of the river.”
She then called for help, and realized there were three men fighting to stay afloat. Just upstream was an upended yellow rubber kayak in the raging river, which was near flood stage at 4 p.m. Monday.
Gauley Bridge firefighters rushed to the river, but had no boat large enough to take on the currents. Nicholas and others could do nothing but watch from the riverbank.
She heard one of the men shout out to another to keep his head up. “[One man] must’ve got stuck in the current,” she said. “He got on the other side of the river and you could hear him yelling for help.”
Two managed to swim to rescuers, leaving the third struggling with the rushing water. “We’d see him and he’d kind of bob up and down and then you’d lose him,” Nicholas said.
Smithers firefighters arrived with a larger boat for the last half of the rescue ordeal, which lasted about an hour. “The New was pretty high. It was pretty swift right there,” said Smithers Fire Chief John Taylor.
With Kanawha Falls looming a short way downstream, Nicholas noted that the men were lucky their calls for help were heard upriver.
The New, a premier whitewater-rafting river, converges with the Gauley River at Gauley Bridge to form the Kanawha River.
Finally, all three men were safely on shore and treated by paramedics. State Police at Gauley Bridge said one was to be taken to Montgomery General Hospital for treatment of possible hypothermia.
All had been wearing wetsuits. “I’m sure if not they would’ve died,” Nicholas said.
While State Police did not immediately have the men’s names, Trooper K.D. Horrocks said he was told the three are students at Appalachian Bible College in Bradley.
“They were all amateur rivermen and said they wanted to try the New,” Horrocks said. “They just picked a bad time to do it.”
Another source said only one is a current student at the Raleigh County college, though all have attended school there and reside in the area. They are all in their mid-20s and all have been river guides, he said.
Nicholas may not know their names, but won’t forget them. “I’ll probably have nightmares about his head bobbing up and down and hear him screaming,” she said.
Floodwaters receding
Across the state on Monday, dry weather helped rivers and streams return to their banks.
“The situation is improving in much of the state,” said Mark Rigsby, spokesman for the state Office of Emergency Services. Floodwaters appeared to be going down in some places, he said.
Charleston’s forecast does not call for rain until Thursday, giving rivers and streams time to recede.
Charleston Fire Chief Grant Gunnoe said his department had been assisting residents throughout Monday with cleanup after about 20 were evacuated from their homes Sunday. He said it would probably be another day before anyone returned home.
Saturated ground has helped to create a number of rockslides in the region that have blocked traffic. In Boone County, W.Va. 85 was blocked by a rockslide at Danville.
The Potomac River crested Monday at its flood stage of 15 feet near Shepherdstown, said Darrell Penwell, director of Emergency Services in Jefferson County. The Shenandoah River crested at 13.3 feet, about a foot above its flood stage, causing minor flooding, he said.
“Kinda quiet,” Penwell said. “Just pulling out idiots that want to drive through the water.”
Officials along the Ohio River reported only moderate flooding. The river crested slightly above flood stage Monday morning at Point Pleasant, where a week earlier as many as 22,000 residents lost power from a winter ice storm.
About 3,000 people across West Virginia remained without power Monday because of last week’s winter storm.
In Mason and Jackson counties, 1,934 residents served by American Electric Power were still without electricity Monday. AEP spokesman Phil Moye said most customers would have their service restored by tonight. However, areas that are remote or heavily damaged may take longer to reach.
Power has yet to be brought back to 1,558 Allegheny Power customers, mostly in Jackson, Roane and Calhoun counties. All but a few should have service back by Monday evening, company spokeswoman Sonya Miller said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.