Townsfolk Cry Flood of Tears as Rivers Rise

A man stands in front of his crumbling home sobbing loudly in gasps and grunts. A woman weeps as she opens a hinged frame holding soggy, mud-smeared photos of her late husband. A teenage girl breaks down, clutching a stuffed monkey she pulled from the muck inside her house.

A new torrent washed this flooded town Friday, the tears of weary refugees returning home for the first time to see just how much they’ve lost.

“I’ve cried so much my face hurts,” says Lisa McQueen, 24, hugging her husband, Randy, in front of their badly warped house.

“We kind of expected it to be bad, but once you see it, it really hits you,” says McQueen, 27. “Everything’s a total loss.”

The McQueens moved into the one-story, white-frame house four years ago last Saturday, the day a foot of rain sent the Licking River pouring through the streets of this town of 2,700.

At least four people have died, dozens are still unaccounted for and most homes and businesses sustained major or total damage, leaving in doubt the future of a town founded more than two centuries ago.

The McQueens had planned to raise their 3-year-old daughter here. But now they talk about moving away as they stare down their block at houses ripped from foundations, and others buckling or smashed by the incredible force of a river.

Trees carry odd snatches of people’s lives--a bag of oranges, a purse, a pair of blue jeans. The Dairy Queen’s cooler is found in the middle of the street half a block away.

Hanging in the air is the dank stink of mildew left by rooftop-high water that’s receded into ankle-deep muck.

A passing nurse, dressed all in white, stops by to measure Judy Owens’ blood pressure. It’s high.

The elderly woman is in tears after pulling from her crumpled mobile home a gold-embossed, double frame with portraits of her late husband, Bo, in his Navy uniform and in formal dress, shortly before his death 14 years ago.

“That was the only man ever in her life,” explains her weeping daughter, Beverly Askin. “He was everything to her.”

Falmouth was among the hardest-hit towns in floods that forced thousands from their homes along the Ohio River and smaller streams in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia. Floods and tornadoes have been blamed for at least 58 deaths.

The latest was counted Friday in the town of West Point, where more than 30 people have refused to flee high water. One holdout, a man considered a hermit by townsfolk, was pulled from water alongside the raised railroad tracks.

The Ohio crested almost 16 feet above flood stage Friday in Louisville, at 38.8 feet. Normal river level at this time of year is 12 feet, and the water was not expected to drop significantly until Sunday. Some western Kentucky towns don’t expect a crest for a week.

Says National Weather Service hydrologist Mike Callahan, “What you’re going to see is a very, very slow fall.”

With the huge hump of water wending downstream, some residents are doing all they can to survive the rising waters, while others are running for high ground.

In Grandview, Ind., water churned up from storm drains advanced on Main Street, forcing even the most stubborn defenders to end efforts to hold back the Ohio with sandbags. The only businesses still open are a liquor store and a tavern.

About 300 of Grandview’s 800 residents have been driven from their homes, and more may be forced out if the river rises 2 more feet before its predicted crest Sunday.

Ellen Hardesty, her husband and three children left their mobile home two days earlier, but she was back on Friday to have the National Guard collect some clothing and other belongings. Soon she was headed out of town, her pickup truck loaded with two mattresses, a bicycle, a wooden table and clothing.

“We didn’t have a home to go to,” she says. “That was the worst part of it.”

Back in Falmouth, a tall, thin, 17-year-old girl comes home in a daze and walks down the middle of the street, seemingly oblivious to the destruction on either side of her and holding her brown-streaked stuffed monkey tight to her chest.

“I’ve had him all my life, my great-grandmother gave him to me,” she says. “I’m just happy I still have him.”

Rosalee Lafollett doesn’t know what to cry about first as her eyes keep refilling. All three houses and trailers she owns are damaged. Her hometown is in ruins. And this week, her brother-in-law, Charles Lafollett, 75, drowned in West Virginia.

His body was taken to Grant’s Lick, Ky., the nearest funeral home that wasn’t under water, for services this weekend.