Flood victims recount river rescues — and attempts

EMBREEVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — Darrell Fender still looked shellshocked as he surveyed the free-flowing and still roiling Nolichucky River pass through where Taylor Bridge had spanned the river just 18 hours earlier.

It was 7:30 on a sunny Saturday morning, and Fender and several dozen other people living around the south side of the river were surveying the devastation around them. Many, like Fender and his wife Carolyn, had lost possessions, including homes and vehicles.

“Everything we own’s gone and it’s just devastating up there,” Fender said of his property on Tittle Circle, a short route along the bottomlands near where the river emerges from its tight course and spills out into the broader valley downstream.

“We was putting in a new trailer and we didn’t even get a chance to get it anchored down and spend the first night in it,” he said.

Many of those with nowhere to go due to washed-out bridges, like the Fenders, had seen things Friday as floodwaters rapidly slammed their community that they hoped won’t prove as tragic as they looked.

“The water came up fairly quickly, in about 45 minutes,” Diane Shelton, who lives near Fender in a house on slightly higher ground, told a News Channel 11 reporter. The reporter had been caught on the south side, interviewing and shooting video, when the bridges and roads became impassible and had spent the night sheltered by a generous couple whose home was unscathed.

“A house came down the river and I could hear screaming,” Shelton said. “So I ran up through the neighbor’s yard and I continued to hear the screaming. I yelled back and she answered me.”

The house had been swept away with the couple who owned it inside. Shelton stood and watched as a local rescue team tried to work in water that was pounding the pillars and deck of Taylor Bridge, just downstream, so hard it would destroy them.

“She was able to bail and they were able to get her in the boat,” Shelton said. “I have her now. She spent the night with me.”

Fender was nearby, barely escaping with little more than the family truck.

“I was there trying to get my dog out and our oldest son, he hollered, ‘come on now, here it is,’ and before we could get to the truck it was already to the bumper of the truck and us trying to get out of the driveway,” Fender said.

His son got in the truck and Fender guided him through the rising waters.

“I run down the road, water to my waist, showing him where the road was out and he followed me and went on.”

‘She made it and they said he didn’t’

Fender confirmed Shelton’s account, mentioning the name of a neighbor who was still unaccounted for as of Saturday morning.

“His house got washed away and he got stranded in his house,” he said. “Him and his wife both did. I think she made it and they said that he didn’t. I don’t know for sure … I’ve known him for 30 years. I hope they find him.”

Shelton said the violent torrent carried whole trees down the channel and through a wider swath, making rescue crews’ jobs dangerous and difficult.

“They had boats, but the rapids were just too bad,” she said. “And all the debris, I mean, it’s just crazy.”

“We were very, very scared when we saw homes coming down the river.”

She heard the same thing as Fender from rescue crews.

“That’s what we were told by fire and rescue. They knew he was in the river, they saw him in the river, and then they didn’t see him again.”

Saturday morning, Shelton was still processing what she’d seen as she and her husband drove around in a four-wheeler.

“To know that those people didn’t make it and I saw them, I haven’t slept all night,” she said. “I’ve just worried about it.”

Shelton said she’s feeling the loss of property and more suffered by friends and neighbors.

“I’m so sad for the people that lost everything they had. We are devastated out here. We have no power. We have no water. We’re just trying to depend on ourselves and try to get through this.”

A diet Coke in his hand and a scene of devastation behind him, Fender said that’s pretty much the only option he and his fellow community members saw, even as they remained cut off from help other than by air.

“We’re gonna do the best we can. Country folk will survive one way or the other.”

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