When the Flood of ’85 happened, I was employed at the FM radio station in Buena Vista as an on-air disc jockey and program director.
At the time, I was the morning DJ at 96.7 FM and usually had to be there to sign-on at 6 a.m. It had been raining for days and the weather report said that flash flooding was possible.
The news person, Allen Reese, and I drove to Buena Vista together that morning, not knowing what to expect when we got there. I remember crossing over the bridge at the Maury when we reached Buena Vista, but it was still dark and I could not see the river from the bridge. As we came in on Rt. 60, I looked to my right at the Georgia Bonded Fibers Plant and saw that the river was up over the banks and the water was swirling around the plant about halfway up the walls of the buildings.
We continued into town and drove down Beech Avenue, which was still passable. The radio station at that time was on 21st Street, on the second floor of the Cosby Building, above Shirey and Brown Pharmacy. I would usually turn onto 22nd Street and park behind the building within the city block, but when we attempted to pull into the back of the lot from 22nd Street, there was a big lake right in the parking area.
Seeing that we couldn’t get to work that morning, we headed back towards Lexington and stopped at the WREL-AM radio trailer and offered to help with the emergency broadcasts. Both the AM and the FM stations had recently been bought by Equus Communications, with plans to unite them under one roof. This was the first time that the staffs of the two former competing radio stations had a chance to work together as one.
The next day, my wife and I went back to BV to look around at the mess left by the flood. I took a photo of my wife, Betsy, standing in front of the radio station doorway on ground-level. Nothing had been cleaned yet and the waterline of the flood was still very visible on the glass front door of the station.
The only damage we suffered, being on the second floor, was a soaked carpet on the stairs. Unfortunately, Shirey and Brown Pharmacy, on the first floor, was severely flooded. While we were there taking photos, the National Guard troops arrived and started to help with the clean-up. Mark Daughtrey Lexington
