Wall of Water Sweeps Through North Carolina Indian Reservation

CHEROKEE, N.C. — A flash flood that roared down a mountain gorge washed away everything Manuel Watty had--crafts made for tourists, his camper home, his car and a jar containing $970.

All he has left, he said Friday, is his shovel.

“My past, present and future went down that river,” the 52-year-old Watty said as he surveyed his camper, left wrapped around a tree along the river bank. “I got out fast. . . . I’ve never seen that river get that big that fast.”

After a downpour the previous night, a wall of water 15 to 20 feet high surged down a gorge feeding the Oconaluftee River in the Great Smoky Mountains.

About a dozen homes were damaged and a mobile home was washed away in the Cherokee Indian Reservation community of Big Cove, N.C., about 15 miles north of Cherokee, said Ted Lambert, emergency management coordinator for the tribe.

State officials were assessing the damage.

About 800 people, many from Big Cove, were evacuated but later returned home. Four children reported missing from a campground on the reservation, about 50 miles west of Asheville, N.C., were safe Friday. They had been taken to Gatlinburg, Tenn., by another camper and were being returned to the campground, said John Smith, assistant tribal police chief.

The flooding washed as many as 700,000 trout out of tanks at Cherokee Trout Farms, said Ron Blankenship, who runs the hatchery with his father. Fish littered the roadway to the hatchery.

At Straight Fork Baptist Church, a line of dirt showed that the water had reached about four feet up the white, clapboard building.