Residents Stunned by Destruction in Wake of Flooding
Brenda White Trending
TRIADELPHIA -- Brenda White was walking past one of the windows at the back of her home on Mink Avenue in Triadelphia on Saturday night when she called to her husband Greg to look at the swiftly rising creek waters.
Wondering whether the water had started bubbling up from the sewers outside the front of her home, she looked out the front door to find that it hadn't yet.
The Whites watched the creek behind the house a little longer, but when they checked back in the front, it was a much different scene. Mink Avenue had become a raging river, one that was carrying massive pieces of debris past the house -- and was quickly rising toward their home's foundation.
"Once it started coming up, it didn't take long at all," Brenda White said. "It was a river. It was awful."
Adding to her stress was an inability for her and her husband to evacuate. The water flowed past both sides of the house and got stronger as the night went on.
As she heard about the cars that had ended up in Elm Grove -- some wrecked in the creek and others butted up against the Shilling Bridge -- she figured she had watched all those cars float past her house along her front yard.
"It was really, really scary," she said, "but I'm just thankful because it could have been a lot worse."
The flood ultimately didn't reach her home. It made it halfway up the skirting of the mobile home before receding. She remained without power Sunday afternoon, but was thankful her home was left without major damage and her cars didn't float away.
White also mentioned that West Virginia state troopers and Ohio County Sheriff's deputies were around the neighborhood throughout the ordeal. When the water was high, they made sure to shout across asking if White and her husband needed anything. When the water started to recede, they were able to get closer.
In the aftermath, though, it was still hard for the lifelong Ohio County resident to wrap her head around what she saw.
"In all my 76 years, I've never seen anything like this," she said. "Ever."
Butch and Mary O'Hara were among those Wheeling residents who were stunned by the devastation left by the flood waters. The O'Haras live near Big Wheeling Creek in the Mar-Win area of Elm Grove, which fortunately did not get hit with the heavy rains like nearby areas just upstream.
"We're still running clear water up there," Butch O'Hara said. "Most of the rainfall came from Oglebay and up from here."
He said a storm rolled through their area Saturday night, but it was nothing that seemed to be unusual for this time of year.
"We had the grandkids in the pool, and it rained enough -- had some thunder, enough to bring them out of the pool," O'Hara said.
Not far downstream where Middle Wheeling Creek and Big Wheeling Creek meet in the heart of Elm Grove, however, it looked like a war zone when the sun rose on Sunday, with several mangled vehicles and massive amounts of debris left behind around the Junior Avenue and Shilling bridges.
"Back when Wheeling Hospital was flooded in '75 or somewhere around there - it was like this," O'Hara said of the last time he remembered seeing such destructive flooding along Wheeling's creeks. "But this tops it right here, for devastation to such a big area."