The last thing Bill Elliot remembers before evacuating onto the roof of his building was seeing the floodwaters “kissing the underside of the mailbox” across the street.
“I thought, we’re gonna have to ride through this,” Elliot said in a recent interview.
Elliot and nine of his coworkers climbed a ladder to the roof of their building in Roanoke during the Flood of ’85, staying dry under a black plastic tarp and clutching snacks from the kitchen. The bookkeeper kept floppy diskettes with company data safe under his coat.
After a rescue helicopter landed on the roof with barely enough room, the group headed to Elliot’s house, kicked off their wet shoes, and drank some beers. By that point in the night, the floodwaters had begun to recede, Elliot said.
Eliott is the former owner of Davis H. Elliot Company, an electrical company founded in Roanoke in 1946. The business was sold to its employees in 2012, according to its website.
Though the company is now based in Kentucky, at the time of the flood, their office was on the corner of Progress Drive and River Road, where his company still owns the building and warehouse. Their land abuts Riverdale Southeast, an industrial center right along the Roanoke River.
The Flood of ’85, which hit Roanoke the hardest on Nov. 4, 1985, related to the remnants of Hurricane Juan, devastated Roanoke homes and businesses, especially those like Riverdale that are right along the riverbank. The Roanoke River crested at a record 23.35 feet during the storm, which is more than 13 feet above flood stage at the Walnut Avenue gauge.
It’s estimated that approximately 3,000 homes and 100 businesses were damaged. The devastation within city limits cost $200 million at the time. Ten people died in the flood in the Roanoke area — three in Roanoke city, three in Roanoke County, two in Botetourt County and two in Franklin County. There were 22 deaths attributed to the storm statewide.
Our Flood of ’85 40th anniversary coverage
Coming Tuesday: Dwayne Yancey writes about the impact the flood had on that year’s election.
Coming Wednesday: Kevin Myatt writes about why the Flood of ’85 happened.
The event was considered a 175-year flood by the U.S. Geological Survey, meaning statistically that a flood of that magnitude has only a 1 in 175 chance of occurring in any given year.
As a result of the devastation, Roanoke city, in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, conducted a massive flood reduction project along the river, which cost at least $70 million.
“It was such a devastating event and the Roanoke River had gotten up and over its banks many times before, but nothing, nothing close to the flood of ’85,” said Nelson Harris, former mayor of Roanoke and local historian. “I think it really did prompt a lot of thinking about development along the river and flood mitigation that absent the event itself, I’m not sure would have occurred.”
Harris was a student at Radford University, and had visited his parents in Raleigh Court that weekend. He said he remembers driving around after the flood and seeing cars in trees near Wasena Park — “It was just jaw dropping.”
The Roanoke River Flood Reduction Project involved acquisition of flood-prone properties, construction of levees, floodwalls and flood storage “bench cuts” along the river to reduce flooding.
Construction from the project ended around 2012, but the city continues to acquire properties in the floodplain and conduct stream restoration projects to mitigate future floods.
“The flood mitigation project was not always easy,” Harris said. “It was a mammoth undertaking, but I don’t think anybody questioned the need for it.”
Today, the city is far more resilient to flooding, and had a chance to prove itself during Hurricane Helene.
One of the main pieces of the flood reduction project was the creation of bench cuts in the Roanoke River. This involved cutting out a “bench” for the river, or a designated place for the extra water to go in the event of a flood, so that hopefully, the water will not extend onto the flat land of the floodplain above.
“You can think of it as giving the river a bench [to] ‘sit’ its flood water on instead of having the flood water affect human life or property,” McKenzie Brocker, water quality administrator with the stormwater department, said.
Corps engineers cut out 0.4 million cubic yards of the riverbank during the project, widening the river. That’s enough dirt to fill over 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Brocker said to an onlooker walking along the greenway, a floodplain bench would look like a “step of open grassy area” between the riverbank and the grade of the natural ground. These benches are regularly inspected and maintained to ensure that they fill with water in a storm, not sediment or vegetation over time.
“The benching seems to have done a great deal to relieve the pressure on the Roanoke Industrial Center,” Elliot said. “It has kept water out since it was done.”
He said at Riverdale, flooding has reached the soccer fields in recent years, but the developed part of the industrial center has, for the most part, stayed dry. Ed Walker, CEO of Riverdale Southeast and developer of the property, did not respond to a text message with questions about the impact of the benching on Riverdale.
The way buildings in the floodplain must be constructed has changed over the years, too. Ian Shaw, stormwater manager for the city, said anything built in the last 40 years is going to be more resilient to flooding — “not to say it wouldn’t get damaged,” he added.
Shaw said any new residential construction in the floodplain must be elevated to two feet above the base flood elevation, which he said is the estimated height of a 100-year storm, like the Flood of ’85.
Commercial development must either be elevated to two feet, or be flood proofed in some way — for example, building floodwalls or raising offices and apartment spaces up to the second floor.
Many of these changes have already had a chance to prove themselves effective.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene during September of last year, Southwest Virginia was hit hard with widespread flooding and power outages.
“Hurricane Helene looked like it was going to miss us, and then the river went four to five feet higher than we were expecting through that storm,” Shaw said, but the water stayed within its banks. Any flooding that did result from the river was minor, compared to what the city may have seen without the flood reduction project.
Downtown Roanoke faces unique challenges with flooding, not necessarily tied to the Roanoke River.
Downtown is built on top of a creek, Shaw said. He said the FEMA floodmaps didn’t come into existence until the early 1970s.
“That’s part of the reason why downtown is where it is, and a lot of our older buildings aren’t necessarily [built higher in the flood zone],” Shaw said.
He said studies and mitigation projects are in progress now to get downtown to the point where in a 25-year storm, the water will stay in the tunnels underneath downtown and won’t flood the streets — a goal that Shaw said will cost the city $200 million to bring to fruition.
He said the next big set of projects involves diverting water on the north side of the railroad tracks, and connecting to the tunnel project downtown. He said this is a $12 million project.
Roanoke during the Flood of 1985. Courtesy of City of Roanoke. 
Roanoke during the Flood of 1985. Courtesy of City of Roanoke. 
Roanoke during the Flood of 1985. Courtesy of City of Roanoke. 
Roanoke during the Flood of 1985. Courtesy of City of Roanoke. 
Roanoke during the Flood of 1985. Courtesy of City of Roanoke. 
Roanoke during the Flood of 1985. Courtesy of City of Roanoke. 
Roanoke during the Flood of 1985. Courtesy of City of Roanoke. 
Roanoke during the Flood of 1985. Courtesy of City of Roanoke.
Development and recreation along the river made possible due to bench cuts, other mitigation measures
Elliot said he thinks the bench cuts along the Roanoke River were a part of what made Riverdale developable again, and Harris echoed that sentiment — “I would suggest that if it hadn’t been for the flood reduction project, we would probably not be seeing the redevelopment of that viscose plant,” Harris said.
He said the same goes for the former Walker Foundry site in Norwich, which is also positioned along the Roanoke River. The site had been vacant since 2019. Developers purchased the property in April and plan to turn it into multifamily and medium-density housing, green space, a restaurant, outdoor active fitness and other commercial spaces.
Because Roanoke can’t expand its footprint, the land available now is “all we have and all we will ever have,” Harris said. This is especially relevant at a time when city leaders are focused on how to best increase the city’s housing supply.
Mayor Joe Cobb spoke to the importance of the flood reduction project for the biomedical industry in Roanoke.
“We wouldn’t have the healthcare sector that we have now without that development in South Roanoke,” Mayor Joe Cobb said in a recent interview. “If we hadn’t been thoughtful about how to reutilize that space, we wouldn’t have that today.” Cobb said recovering this space was so important, because there simply wasn’t another place where the complex could go in Roanoke.
Many buildings in that area have parking decks or open atriums on the first floor, to adhere to building codes for flood-prone areas.
Harris said Roanoke has also taken advantage of these bench cuts recreationally.
The Roanoke River Greenway is the backbone of the region’s greenway system, and has been listed as a main priority of the system’s growth spanning back to its original plans, written in 1995 — a decade after the historic flood.
The system as a whole has grown to include about 40 miles of paved roads, and the Roanoke River Greenway is still expanding.
“It really gave [the city] an opportunity to rethink how the river is used. And by that I mean recreationally,” Harris said. “…In some areas, we were able to make these flood reduction cut areas conducive to trails for the greenway system. To really take advantage of that work and turn it into a recreational amenity via the greenways, that has proved to be helpful.”
Mountain towns like Roanoke can’t avoid flooding altogether. Roanoke is still acquiring properties in the floodplain and increasing awareness of flood safety.
Through the work done under the flood reduction project, Roanoke is more resilient to the 10-year and 25-year storms, Shaw said. No matter what actions are taken, it would be hard to come back from another 100-plus year storm like what caused the Flood of ’85, he said.
“A flood of that magnitude would still be a pretty catastrophic event. But I think at least people would be better notified about it, to hopefully not have a loss of life.” Shaw said he would expect a smaller loss of property in people’s homes or businesses.
He said flooding of some degree is largely inevitable in the mountains.
To address that, Roanoke has implemented notification system changes and has a swift water rescue team, along with information sent out regularly to residents living in the floodplain, Brocker said.
The city is still acquiring properties within the floodplain and demolishing existing buildings on those properties. This is only done with voluntary participation and sale from the property owners.
Along the James River, communities learn to live with the water
The Election Day flood of 1985 wasn’t isolated to Roanoke. As rain dumped into the western reaches of the James River, numerous localities downstream, most notably Lynchburg, found themselves underwater overnight.
Photographs in the Lynchburg Museum’s archive show the contents of downtown businesses, manufacturing sites and roads washed away as the river reached its highest recorded level.
But that wasn’t the first — or last — flooding event to mark James River communities, said Rob Campbell, Upper James Senior Manager for the James River Association. The river has risen and fallen for millions of years, whittling down the Blue Ridge Mountains and carving the landscape that we now know as the James River Watershed.
No manmade infrastructure like dams can stop extreme flooding events, Campbell said. Instead, natural resiliency is the key for the 3 million people who call the watershed home.
“When we look at our most resilient areas, it’s those wild areas, the areas where the river punches through the national forest,” he said. “We learn from them.”
Those areas have intricate underground networks of tree and grass roots that hold the river banks together — think of it as mother nature’s version of reinforced concrete. The roots keep the banks from washing away and further blocking already overrun waterways, Campbell said, and they also act as sponges that absorb water as it passes through.
As cities have been developed along the river, roads, parking lots and buildings have replaced those root networks. Their impermeable surfaces cast water into the James, making flooding events speed up rather than slow down when heavy rain hits.
The James River is a central element of Virginia localities’ culture, history and tourism, Campbell said, so watershed property couldn’t and shouldn’t be abandoned entirely. Rather, communities can find ways to be the best stewards possible while living with the river — such as planting trees to build root networks along the banks.
“That’s really where the resilience of the James comes from — from people getting smarter every time something like ’85 happens.”
—Emma Malinak
A 2024 Hazard Mitigation Projects report published by the city states that $13 million has been spent to mitigate 139 homes and structures, returning 58 acres to natural floodplain open space. The report estimates that the city will spend $200,000 per year on structure acquisition in the future.
On Oct. 6, the city council accepted $7.1 million in funding from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation to acquire land in the floodplain and to conduct watershed modeling for the Trout Run and Hortons Branch watersheds. The funding is through VDCR’s Community Flood Preparedness Fund Grant.
The funding allows for acquisition of land located on Indian Village Lane, in Southeast Roanoke, and on Franklin Road, in Southwest Roanoke, where George’s Flowers is currently located.
George Clements, owner of George’s Flowers, said he’s been in that location on Franklin Road for almost 30 years. He said originally, the floodway was behind his building, but through the flood maps being readjusted, the floodway is in the middle of Franklin Road.
He said during a flood in October 2018, his building was “like an island,” cut off from the rest of Franklin Road. Another flood left him with four feet of mud in the greenhouse, he said.
Clements said his business does require more space and a larger building, but properties within the floodplain are limited as to how much they can rebuild and how much they can spend on renovations.
“It’s kind of a win-win, it lets [George’s Flowers] relocate to a safer location and lets us kind of get back into really trying to restore Ore Branch and the floodplain in that particular property,” Shaw said.
George’s Flowers is adjacent to the former Ramada Inn site, which the city purchased in 2021, also with CFPF funding.
Cobb said the land where the Ramada Inn sat will be preserved as a wetland or green space. He said he thinks the area “has the potential to be one of those lovely spots that people just like to go to.” Clements also expressed excitement about the restoration of the Ore Branch Creek, and sees it as a “win for nature,” though he said he will be sad to see his building demolished.
Shaw said even through all this work, it’s important to pay attention to weather alerts and to have a plan in place in case of a flood.
“When you get these weather forecasts, even if they do look favorable, you always have to take them seriously,” Shaw said.
He said this includes the flash flood warnings that ping on your cellphone, even if they seem frequent.
“I think we’ve seen from recent incidents, even with all the efforts we’ve taken to make Roanoke a safer place and a less likely place for flooding, we can never predict nature,” Cobb said. “All we can do is make sure we have a really solid Emergency Management Plan, which we do.”
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