Nolichucky wreaks havoc along highways 81, 107

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Lamar residents Penny Smith and Shane Gardner had just crossed the Nolichucky River via Taylor Bridge a half hour earlier, but looking back toward Jonesborough, the structure was overtaken by the river’s rising flood Friday afternoon. 

The couple was suddenly on an island with dozens, if not hundreds, of people. The route to Erwin through Embreeville was also impassible thanks to the river breaching low-lying sections of Highway 81. On the way back west on Route 107 towards Greene County, News Channel 11 had just passed covered soybean fields, a church with water four feet up its foundation and a swollen river twice its width carrying everything from a camper to drowning cattle. In a low spot on 107, water had rapidly risen three feet under.

For Smith, it meant she couldn’t see her brand new grandchild born a day earlier in Johnson City. And with the flooding widespread regionally, it meant the baby’s mother, Smith’s daughter, didn’t know whether the Doe River’s raging waters might have swept away her car at her home in Hampton.

“She just now called me crying, and she’s at the hospital. up in Hampton where she lives the water is coming in. She doesn’t know where her cars at. She don’t know if it’s under water or if it’s been flooded off.”

The inability to travel was a minor inconvenience as the toll of the flooding began to be evident. The river gage at Embreeville still hadn’t peaked, but was already threatening to exceed levels of a 1977 flood that old timers recalled as they watched the wide fields south of the river channel that had become part of the Nolichucky. The scene reminded Smith of flash floods that took more seven lives in Carter County in the 1998, but she said this seemed worse.

“Nothing like this ever,” she said as the river continued raging over the bridge behind her. “I lived over in Elizabethton for 28 years, whenever they had that big flood when it came from Roan Mountain, when the snow melted and stuff. I saw that and that was very devastating. From what I’m hearing, it’s a lot like that again.”

Just up the highway toward Taylor Bridge Road, Marty Johnson was trying to get his cattle to high ground. Several relatives and friends were helping. But 30 minutes later  up at the crossroads store near the bridge, Johnson — who also represents the area on the Washington County Commission — reckoned he may have lost about 20 head.

An older man pointed to a large camper floating down the river. He said a Vietnam Veteran who is battling the effects of Agent Orange lived in the camper at Riverview Campground with all his personal belongings.

The mail carrier sat in his vehicle at the store, stuck as was everyone after the 107 route back to Greeneville closed off and sealed everyone’s fate until the waters receded.

People gazed at the torrent where a bridge had been an hour earlier. The waters had risen that fast, and they weren’t letting up. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of personal goods were rushing past, but Smith said people would recover from those losses.

“Everybody does need to pray, and they need to know that God is still in control and that material things can be replaced and lives cannot,” Smith said. “And just be glad that you’ve got your family and your friends and everybody still around. Nobody’s perished yet and everything’s good.”

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