By Jim Bissett, The Dominion Post
ROWLESBURG – Rick Felton worked for the railroad and was used to hearing metal on metal. Still, the CSX brakeman was sonically unprepared for what shrieked across the night before the Election Day Flood of Nov. 5, 1985.
That’s when people started realizing they were in for it. That’s when Hurricane Juan decided it wasn’t going gentle.
A once-and-former weather-maker was still stirring water and clouds from its original path in the Gulf.
Juan by then had spiraled down to a tropical depression.
It was about to make a comeback.
The melding with another storm system over the Mid-Atlantic would result in the bodies of 47 West Virginians being pulled from the rivers and the rubble of ruined towns.
The cost in damages in the Mountain State alone would exceed $700 million.
And the evening before the height of the renewed storm’s powers … Felton’s hometown never had a chance.
The Cheat had slammed into the supports of the CSX railroad trestle that bisected Rowlesburg.
All that water, churning fast and loaded with debris, knocked the very structure off to one side.
It couldn’t get any worse.
Except, it just did.