No one feared for the heart of Appalachia when Camille made landfall at Waveland, Miss., on Aug. 17, 1969. The focus was on the coast, and rightfully so, as Camille’s nearly 200 mile-per-hour winds wrought unprecedented devastation while driving north through Mississippi. Mercifully, due to its incredible force, rain amounts were scant and flooding minor because it moved through the state so quickly.
After leaving Mississippi, Camille made a hard right turn, and quickly lost steam as it moved east, passing over Tennessee and Kentucky as a tropical depression. As the storm's sputtering low pressure remnants headed toward Appalachia, residents of the mountains were assured the worst had passed. Few would've believed that Camille had saved most of its rain load for the area around tiny Massie’s Mill, Va.
The storm’s ferocity when it hit Virginia owed to a rare confluence of events — but one that was part of the DNA of the Blue Ridge mountains. The summer of 1969 had been abnormally wet, leaving the soil in the area saturated. Then as Camille made its way to Central Virginia, another storm system took aim at the region from the North. Both encountered the upsloping winds of the Blue Ridge that push air into the colder higher cloud masses. This process triggered a torrent of rain that rapidly overwhelmed the drainage system.
Waterways choked with debris soon burst, taking 20-ton boulders, two-story houses — and even a 95-foot CSX bridge with them.
Residents received no warning of the impending catastrophe because there was no system to warn of flash-flooding in the area. In fact, weather stations in the region shut down at night. Most people had no time to prepare or even to understand what was happening. They fled their homes into rain falling so hard one survivor said he had to cup his hands over his face just to breathe. Those fortunate enough to be tossed into trees—often naked from the force of the water stripping off their clothes—survived clinging to branches above the deluge all night.
For months, residents undertook a tortured search for family members lost to raging flood waters. Parents were haunted by losing their grip on their children. Children were filled with guilt because they had survived while their siblings perished. Some never found out what happened to their loved ones.
The location of the storm severely hampered the distribution of aid. Whereas relief agencies could easily access coastal areas crisscrossed with highways, the rural county’s minimal infrastructure blocked access to some areas for weeks.