Boat rescues were the norm as Ivan’s rains caused flash floods all over the Ohio Valley. (File Photo)

WHEELING — James Blazier just couldn’t believe how much rain was falling the afternoon of Sept. 17, 2004.

Now the Wheeling fire chief, Blazier was a captain with 15 years in the department at that point. He knew the remnants of Hurricane Ivan would pass through the Ohio Valley. Emergency management officials had been tracking the storm’s path for days. Yet when the storm finally arrived on Sept. 17, he was stunned at how the rain kept coming and coming.

In the middle of that rainfall, Blazier started to realize what the storm was going to do to the Ohio Valley. He was driving to the DMV office in Moundsville on his day off when he looked over at the John Marshall High School baseball field and saw it was totally submerged.

It really hit home when he pulled into the driveway of his Mozart residence. He didn’t even make it through the door before his oldest daughter stuck her head outside and said the fire department was on the phone and he had to head to work immediately.

“I said, ‘Tell them I’m on my way,'” he recalled. “And that was the last I saw of my house for three days.”

It was 20 years ago this past week that Ivan dumped 9½ inches of rain on the Ohio Valley in just 24 hours, pummeling the community with a 1-2 punch of flash flooding and Ohio River flooding that killed three people and caused millions of dollars in damage throughout the region.

“People don’t realize the force of what water can actually do,” Belmont County Emergency Management Director Dave Ivan said. “Well, we found out what water can do. It wasn’t pretty.”

Those who lived and worked through those days remember the initial chaos of the flash flooding, the widespread destruction from the river flooding and the jaw-dropping scenes as the valley began to clean up from the historic flood. Yet they also remember the resilience of the people of the valley, as well as their kindness as they banded together to recover.

Few areas of Wheeling were spared from Ivan’s wrath. Residents in Elm Grove waded through ankle deep water in the storm’s aftermath.
(File Photo)

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Former Wheeling Fire Chief Steve Johnston was the head of the department in 2004. He and other emergency management officials had been keeping an eye on Ivan as it made landfall on the eastern coast of Alabama and kept pushing its way through the United States. He was hoping the brunt of the storm would jog away from the Ohio Valley but realized it was bound directly for the region.

When the rain started, it was a sustained downpour, Johnston said, the likes of which he hadn’t seen since the Wegee and Pipe creek flash flooding of 1990 that killed 26 people in Eastern Ohio.

“It kept up for a long period of time,” said Johnston, now the operations superintendent for the city of Wheeling. “Our guys were prepping to go out the door. We were waiting for the calls to come in.”

And once they did, much like the rain, they never seemed to stop. In Wheeling, the calls came first from Elm Grove, then Fulton and Kruger Street, as Wheeling Creek and Middle Wheeling Creek quickly invaded neighborhood streets. The floodwater kept rising, overflowing the creek banks along Washington and Valley View avenues and even engulfing Leatherwood Lane near The Linsly School.

Blazier said that, at one point, the water at the intersection of Washington and Valley View was waist deep. And the water wasn’t just deep, he said. It was fast, which complicated efforts to rescue residents from flooded homes.

“There was a time on Valley View that it wasn’t safe to try and get them out of their homes, because the current going past the homes was just too swift,” he said. “It was safer for them to stay upstairs in their home than it would be to try and rescue them.”

Wheeling wasn’t alone in suffering from flash floods. Middle Wheeling Creek climbed over its banks in Ohio County. Wheeling Creek swelled in the Brookside community of Belmont County, while the same could be said for McMahon Creek near Glencoe. Glenns Run swallowed up the cars at R.J.’s Used Car Lot on Colerain Pike.

Belmont County Sheriff Dave Lucas, who was as sergeant on the force during those floods, said many of those who needed to be rescued were people who just weren’t prepared for how quickly the water rose.

“I don’t think anybody foresaw what happened,” he said. “It was just unbelievable. We just weren’t ready for it.”

Hurricane Ivan’s torrential rains forced the Ohio River over its banks and onto the streets of Wheeling Island. (File Photo)

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Once the flash flooding subsided, the Ohio Valley had to brace for a new hazard – the Ohio River flooding.

Blazier said that early estimates showed the region might be spared from river flooding, but those predictions changed quickly. The river rose rapidly, cresting at 45.3 feet at Wheeling on Sept. 19. That is the 12th highest crest of the Ohio River at Wheeling in recorded history.

Whole neighborhoods found themselves underwater. The ones that always suffered during floods, like Wheeling Island and other low-lying parts of the city, were at the top of the list as usual. But the destruction enveloped many other parts of the valley.

Moundsville and New Martinsville were deluged. At the Steubenville Marina, the top of the wall normally is 30 feet away from the Ohio River. At that time, the river water nearly covered the entire marina.

Emergency service personnel did have some help from the longtime residents of flood-prone areas. They knew what was coming, so their homes were better prepared by the time the floods hit.

Johnston said he leaned on longtime Wheeling Island residents during the 2004 flood. Their institutional knowledge proved essential.

“They saw it coming,” he said. “Honestly, I followed their lead. When they said (the river) was going to come up, I believed them. They were probably as good at predicting what was going to go on as the experts.

“If you don’t use those folks as a resource, you’re really passing on probably one of the more valuable ones you could have,” Johnston added. “Some of these folks have encyclopedic memories.”

Even with preparation, tragedy couldn’t be prevented. Dozens of homes were destroyed. Whole sections of roads were washed away. Three people were killed.

Winterville resident Fredrick Harris, 37, was killed Sept. 17 in a car crash in the heavy rain on Ohio 7 in Jefferson County. Joel Robinson, 45, of Fish Creek Road in Marshall County was last seen Sept. 18, the day his pickup truck was found. His body was found Sept. 23. Mary Douglas, 38, of St. Clairsville left her car in the Barton area of Belmont County on Sept. 17. Her body was found Oct. 20 in Wheeling Creek in Boydsville.

Sometimes it becomes too much to bear even for people trained to work through tragic situations, Ivan said.

“Your emotions, they’re going absolutely crazy,” he said. “We’re taught to try to help people and in a situation like that, you see some of the worst things. It’s tough for first responders to be able to deal with that.”

A significant portion of U.S. 40 in the Lansing area of Belmont County was completely wiped out by creek flooding that occurred when a massive amount of rainfall rushed through the area. Twisted metal and broken concrete were all that remained when the water receded. (File Photo)

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After the floodwater finally receded, Ohio Valley residents began the long process of recovery. They faced roads, yards and parking lots caked with inches of mud. Whole floors of homes were ruined. Some entire homes were damaged beyond repair. Ruined belongings were piled along sidewalks.

On Wheeling Island, the cleanup happened in stages, Ohio County Emergency Management Director Lou Vargo said. Crews would go up and down the neighborhood’s streets picking up garbage and debris. They would haul the junk to a single staging area on the Island and collect it there. Then crews would then haul that debris off the Island.

It was twice the work, Vargo said, but it opened the neighborhood’s street much quicker.

By late October 2004, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had received 8,164 requests for assistance. Ohio County had the most with 2,754, followed by Belmont County with 1,714. Yet the requests stretched as far north as Hancock County and as far south as Tyler County.

Yet through it all, officials saw the kindness of the Ohio Valley shine through. It was found even during the flood. Johnston remembers an old neighbor braving the flood water in a boat, rescuing people in need. As the grueling cleanup process went along, Vargo saw residents who had wrapped up their work walk over to neighbors or even complete strangers to help them clean their properties.

Vargo remembers members of a local church handing out bag lunches to people cleaning up their homes. After hours of cleaning and hauling, the last thing flood victims remember to do is eat, he said. And while it might be just a bologna sandwich, many said it was the best tasting bologna sandwich they ever had.

Good deeds great and small made the process much easier, Vargo said.

“It’s just this valley,” he said. “That’s the kind of camaraderie we have at all levels, from the citizen level up to the city government and all the first responders, the county first responders, volunteer fire departments. A lot of them missed several days of work just to help their communities, because that’s what they do.”

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As the Ohio Valley slowly returned to normal following one of the most devastating storms in the region’s history, there were lessons to be learned. Johnston said the Wheeling Fire Department’s swift water rescue team was born from that 2004 flood. More care was taken with first responders by forming critical incident stress management teams, making sure emergency workers had the resources to bounce back from the overwhelming stress that comes with spending days fighting floodwater and rescuing residents.

Among the most important lessons, Ivan said, was creating better lines of communication between emergency management officials and locals residents. Residents need to understand that the warnings emergency officials offer aren’t just simple suggestions. They could mean the difference between life and death.

“Our big thing is to educate them before this happens,” Ivan said. “Getting them prepared for the next one, that’s our big challenge, and we’re still working on that to this day.”

Lucas agreed that communication and education are integral to the safety of Ohio Valley residents. The potential for another disaster is always there.

“We’ve got to learn from what happened to hopefully better prepare for the next incident,” he said, “because we know it’s going to happen again.”