50 years later, flood lingers in the memory of its victims

Corbin resident Barthelia Chavis sorted through an old cedar armoire last week, rearranging some clothing. It is the only true possession left from her childhood.
Nothing else survived the biggest flood to hit the city of Corbin in its history. January 28 will officially mark the 50th anniversary of the devastating event that caught a city full of people by surprise, and changed their lives forever.
“It’s quality. It’s good stuff,” she says of the armoire, still in remarkably good condition today. “It was totally filled with much, but it made it. It was the only thing I had left.”
Soaking rains in the days leading up to the flood made conditions ripe for flash flooding that overtook many portions of north, east and south Corbin in the early morning hours of January 29. Chavis said she remembers clearly seeing waters rise, then recede at her family home on Christian Street. Her family hoped for the best.
“It went down. We’d been in a flood before, so we thought maybe it was over … it wasn’t,” she said. ” There was a cloudburst and it rained like you wouldn’t believe. The water was around the house before we could even think about it.”
Newspapers reports say the Corbin area got 3.7 inches of rain over a 36-hour period. Lynn Camp Creek, much more narrow and shallow at the time, spilled its banks into the surrounding homes.
All told, 231 homes and 97 businesses were severely damaged. Estimates at the time put the destruction at $2 million.
Corbin Mayor Willard McBurney said he was a freshman in high school when the flood hit. His uncle, Dick Vermillion, who lived on Bell Street, got out of bed the morning of Jan. 29 only to step out into waist-deep water. McBurney said by the time his family got there to help, the water was chest high.
“It came so fast. We never seen anything like it,” he said. “It went up like that in a matter of minutes.”
The situation was similar all over town. Main Street was choked with water. McBurney recalls instances where only rooftops of homes were barely visible above the water. He and other family members raced to his grandmother’s Master Street home to help her out of the basement and were barely able to beat rushing waters.
Ten to 15 tourists were stranded downtown, but were helped out by boat like many other residents in the area.
Chavis said a neighbor, who had a boat, came to rescue her, her mother and two sisters.
“He came and took us to high ground,” she said. “I was never so happy to see anyone, but we were crying because we had to leave our daddy behind.”
Her father and brother made it to safety sometime later. She blames the stress of the flood for the untimely death of her father less than two months later on March 9.
“He had a heart problem. I think it was just too much for him … the stress of it all.”
Though no lives were lost as a direct effect of the flood, the damage to the economy and well being of the town was enormous.
Corbin City Commissioner Dennis Lynch, who worked at an auto shop near current city hall building, remembers trying to jack cars up as high as possible to keep them out of the water. Some of the effort was fruitless.
“It was just all at once like a dam broke,” he said. “It was so weird. They called all of us that worked there during the nighttime and said you better get down here, everything is flooded. I never saw anything like that in my whole lifetime.”
Lynch said he remembers well wading around in water chest deep, and recalls boats navigating city streets in an effort to evacuate people. He said certain areas were dangerous because of swift current.
The high water caused at least three traffic accidents. A gas explosion damaged Hooper-Graybeal Auto Parts, and fires broke out at Holbert’s Men’s Wear and at a residence on Chesnut Street. Electricity went down in much of the city.
WCTT was off air for over four hours because floodwaters soaked telephone lines leading to a transmitter in Woodbine.
Only one person was known to be severely injured in the flood. C.F. Jones, of Beatty Ave., suffered a broken leg as she slipped on a slick porch.
Members off the U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers quickly came to town to inspect bridges for flood damage. Members of the National Guard patrolled streets during the night to prevent looting.
When citizens began cleaning up the mess in the aftermath two days after the flood’s worst moments, the reality of what happened was sobering.
Chavis, who was slated to be married in early February, had lost her wedding dress and everything else she owned. Their family home was ruined. Flood water had gotten within five inches of the ceiling.
“Everything was ruined at the house. There was mud about three inches thick on the floor. It was awful,” Chavis said. “All of the chickens we had in our coop were dead. They drowned.”
McBurney said he remembers well homes, streets and businesses covered in thick foul mud, garbage, sewer and refuse.
“You know that tsunami that hit a few years ago, it looked like that,” he said. “There was just mud and junk and trash everywhere.”
“There was a grocery store on the corner of Master and Ford Streets and the windows had broken out from the weight of the water. There was grocery stuff just floating all over the place. It was terrible the stuff that was lying around.”
He said people “worked around the clock for months” trying to get back to normal, and said he doubts the community every really fully recovered from the incident.
“There’s so many people that lost so much money from that, I doubt they ever recovered,” he said. “There wasn’t any flood insurance or anything like there is today.”
The American Red Cross set up distribution stations around town. Chavis said she remembers getting gallons of milk from them while she was staying in a downtown apartment that was above flood level. They also provided her family, and others, with furniture when they bought a new home on Fifth Street.
Kentucky Gov. A.B. “Happy” Chandler made a stop in Corbin during a 700-mile survey of flood-ravaged areas in eastern Kentucky. Shortly thereafter, work began to widen Lynn Camp Creek to help alleviate any future problems of that magnitude.
Chavis said to this day, she still worries about flooding even at her Fifth Street home.
“We had a big rain not too long ago and the street was underwater a bit. I’m scared to death of it now,” she said. “I prayed to God, please don’t let it flood. If you’ve ever been through something like that, you’d know what I mean.”