Dale M. Brumfield

Special to The News Leader

Throughout western Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley the words “Hurricane Camille” are 48-years later still synonymous with unprecedented destruction. On August 17, 1969, Camille became one of only a few hurricanes on record to make landfall on the gulf coast of Mississippi as the deadliest Category Five. Wind gusts of up to two hundred miles per hour were reported before the meters were blown away, and the 24-ft storm surge was the highest ever recorded in the United States. Camille was responsible for 143 deaths on the gulf coast.

By the time Camille reached the Mississippi/Tennessee border it had weakened to a tropical depression. Heavy rain was originally forecast for the western part of Virginia, but a freak confluence of three factors over the commonwealth turned the “heavy rain forecast” into torrential record downpours.

The counter-clockwise flow of air created by the storm drew huge amounts of moisture from the Atlantic Ocean into the storm center. Then, an “orthographic lifting,” or updrafts of air created by the Blue Ridge Mountains forced that moisture up into the westerly flow of air, where it was cooled to a “release point,” then turned into vast torrents of rain. A stalled cold front acting as a blocking force pushed the storm eastward over the mountains where the updrafts of air continued to force the moisture upward, then into even more rain.

On August 19, in the middle of the night while everyone slept, Camille stalled over Nelson County, dropping an astonishing 27 to 31 inches of rain in just a five-hour period. The sudden inundation of water caused an entire side of a mountain at Davis Creek to cave in, destroying 23 of 25 homes. A tractor trailer and its two passengers disappeared under the mammoth mudslide and was never found.

Most homes in Massie’s Mill and Lovingston were completely destroyed. Birds and livestock out in the open drowned just trying to breathe. Whole families died either in their homes or as they desperately tried to escape the raging floodwaters.

Logs were piled 30 feet high on a five-mile stretch of Davis Creek, where an estimated 40 inches of rain fell in eight hours. One hundred twenty four died in Nelson, including 21 members of the Huffman family, and 32 were never found.

Twenty-three people died in Rockbridge County from Camille including three members of the Rion family of Glasgow and eight members of the Clark family in Cornwall. Buena Vista was deluged under six feet of water, while Glasgow was almost washed away under an almost unbelievable 14 feet of floodwater.

One hundred and fifty head of cattle were lost, crops were destroyed, and fertile topsoil was washed away, impacting agriculture for years. Damages in Rockbridge County alone exceeded $30 million.

In Waynesboro the torrential rain caused the South River to flood downtown and the Club Court area under six feet of water, causing property damage in excess of $2 million. One former firefighter recalled wading through water chest-deep in the downtown Leggett’s store to make sure the fuse panel was off. New cars sat ruined at Freed’s. Many downtown businesses had huge sales in the weeks following the flood to unload damaged merchandise.

In all Camille took 260 lives, with 153 in Virginia, and the majority of those in Nelson County. Property damage in Virginia topped a half-billion dollars, and it was a decade before the commonwealth got back to normal.

Dale Brumfield can be reached at Dalebrumfield@protonmail.com