Voting lists and voting machines washed away. Some precincts couldn’t open. Others had to be evacuated. The Flood of ’85 was also the ‘Election Day Flood.’

The phones rang all day. It was Election Day, and that’s what an Election Day in the registrar’s office was always like. Precinct officials called to verify that they were up and running. They called again — and sometimes again and again when they had problems. Voters called and called. Voters who didn’t know what precinct to go to. Voters who had gone to the wrong precinct. Voters who thought they were registered but weren’t on the books. In an era before texts and emails, if you wanted to know something, you had to pick up the phone and call — and so anyone with an election-related question called the registrar’s office. And they called a lot.

The were some calls coming in that November day in 1985 to the Amherst County Registrar’s Office that weren’t election-related. The day before, the remnants of Hurricane Juan had drenched the western part of the state. Most of the damage was west of the Blue Ridge, particularly in the Roanoke Valley. Amherst was east of the Blue Ridge. It was wet, but not flooded. Still, those who had watched the news were all too familiar with how there was a death toll that still hadn’t been fully tallied — and they’d seen the dramatic film footage of how a TV helicopter had plucked a state legislator in Roanoke off the roof of his building just moments before it collapsed and was swept downstream.

The extra calls coming into the Amherst registrar’s office that day were about the downstream impact of that flooding. How high would the James River crest? What problems would that cause for communities nearby? “We were getting regular reports from the sheriff’s office,” recalls Rodney Taylor, who was registrar then. Still, that was just background noise until other reports started coming in. At Big Island in Bedford County, the high waters of the James River had raged through the paper mill and knocked loose four chlorine tanks. Those tanks were now washed downstream and officials were worried they’d hit something, break open and spew their dangerous contents. The bridges in Lynchburg were a particular concern. Police closed them to traffic. Taylor wondered what that would mean for Amherst residents who worked in the city and couldn’t get home to vote. Still, not a problem he had to deal with.

Then came another call. This one was from state police. Everyone had to get out of Riverville right now. The chlorine tanks had washed through Lynchburg without incident but were now headed Riverville’s way. Suddenly, the flood that had been somebody else’s problem was now Taylor’s problem: There was a voting precinct in Riverville and the law required it stay open for several more hours yet, chlorine tanks or no chlorine tanks.

The Election Day flood

What we remember now as the Flood of ’85 dumped 4.25 inches of rain on the Roanoke Valley in just three hours that Monday morning. That rain fell on ground that was already saturated, so the water had no place to go. In all, 10.63 inches of rain fell over a five-day period that culminated Nov. 4 with a flood. This wasn’t just a Roanoke Valley flood; it was a flood across much of the western part of Virginia — and into West Virginia, where things were even worse. Before it was over, 22 people in Virginia were dead, with damage of up to $600 million to $800 million. In today’s dollars, that would be $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion. Cardinal’s Samantha Verrelli wrote about the lingering impacts of that flood a full four decades later in a story Monday. Cardinal weather journalist Kevin Myatt will write about the meteorological details of that historic event in his Wednesday weather column.

In West Virginia, where 47 people died, the flood is often simply remembered as “the Killer Flood of ’85.” For some in Virginia, the storm has a different name: the Election Day Flood. While many people were busy trying to rescue their neighbors that day, others were busy trying to rescue something else: An election.

This is their story.

Sunday, Nov. 3, 1985: Candidates are grounded by fog

The first sign of trouble came on the Sunday before the election — what was then Nov. 3, 1985. Virginia’s voting patterns were very different then and Democrats always concluded the campaign with a final weekend of rallies in the coal counties of Southwest Virginia, which then offered rich veins of Democratic votes, so that’s where the party’s historic ticket was headed. Virginia was electing a governor that year, just as we are now, but it wasn’t always the Democratic candidate for governor, Gerald Baliles, who got the attention. Democrats had nominated a Black candidate for lieutenant governor for the first time ever — Douglas Wilder. And they’d nominated a woman for attorney general — Mary Sue Terry, the first time a female candidate had a serious shot at winning statewide. The polls had been favorable all fall and now, with voting drawing near, a sense of history was in the air. So was something else, though. A storm.

It had rained for days and days. Everything was wet and gray. To make all their required stops in coal country, the candidates and their entourages flew by helicopter. When the choppers took off from a lunchtime stop at Big Rock in Buchanan County, they flew into such thick cloud cover that they lost sight of one another. Just outside Big Stone Gap, the rain cut loose. For those inside the choppers, it sounded like someone was throwing rocks at them. The pilots found landing to be a challenge; the cloud had sunk all the way to the ground.

It was decided that, for safety’s sake, the candidates would have to travel by ground to their final stop in Clintwood.

Monday morning, Nov. 4, 1985: The first panicked call

Hurricane Juan had wrung itself out over Louisiana day before. Whatever remained as the system moved into Virginia would bring rain, but nothing unusual was expected. The National Weather Service had issued a flood watch for Southwest Virginia but then saw so little activity on its radars that the advisory was canceled at 6 a.m. The storm didn’t slack up, though. Instead, it got worse.

Around 8:30 a.m., the head of the state election office, Sue Fitz-Hugh, took a call from the registrar in Nelson County. The registrar was panicking; she’d been told the county had been put on a flood alert. This was just 16 years after Hurricane Camille had killed so many people in the county that officials never could agree on a number, but no one disputed that it was over 100. The Nelson registrar wanted to close the office and go home. Fitz-Hugh told her she couldn’t do that the day before an election. Then Fitz-Hugh called the state’s emergency services department to ask what was going on — but no one there knew anything about any alert. Fitz-Hugh went back to work, but soon other registrars were calling with similar reports.

The tradition in those days was that candidates spent the final day before an election flying from airport to airport in cities with TV stations to make their last-minute appeals. John Chichester, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, thought himself lucky. He was a pilot with his own plane. He had flown to Southwest Virginia for the Republican rallies over the weekend; now he was going to start this final day in Bristol and start his “Victory Tour” there. He couldn’t. All flights had been grounded due to the worsening storm. The only way he could get anywhere — much less home to Fredericksburg — was to rent a car and drive. His “Victory Tour” was grounded.

Wilder had somehow gotten back to Richmond after a weekend in Southwest Virginia, but Baliles and Terry started their day with a Democratic rally on Monday morning in Roanoke. They barely got away. As they rode to the airport, rising water was popping manhole covers and flooding the streets. At the airport, their pilot insisted on waiting until there was a break in the clouds. None came, but the pilots took off anyway. Not long afterward, it started raining even harder.

Monday afternoon Nov. 4, 1985: Voting lists and voting machines washed away

At 1 p.m., Fitz-Hugh got a call from the registrar in Salem. She’d been forced to evacuate. One of Fitz-Hugh’s first questions: Did she manage to evacuate the list of voters with her? No. In Richmond, election officials started printing out a new list of Salem voters. State police would have to drive the new list to Salem — if they could get there.

In Roanoke, some voting machines had been washed away. The registrar had some paper ballots on hand, just in case, but not nearly enough. Fitz-Hugh was forced to make decisions on the fly, with no law to guide her. She decided it would be OK if the Roanoke registrar photocopied those blank paper ballots, but they all had to get embossed with an official seal to verify they were legit.

Nor far from downtown Roanoke, where the registrar was busy photocopying paper ballots to save the election, Vic Thomas was trying to save his life — and the lives of his employees. Thomas was a Democratic state legislator from Roanoke, a grandson of Lebanese immigrants who was known for his fervent support of hunting and his long opposition to requirements that hunter wear blaze orange. He also ran a small grocery store on Orange Avenue, near an otherwise placid Tinker Creek. Tinker was not so placid now. It roared up out of it banks so fast that Thomas and his employees couldn’t get away. They climbed up on the roof but even that didn’t seem high enough as the waters kept rising. State police helicopters were so busy rescuing people that private helicopters were pressed into service. A helicopter for Roanoke television station WDBJ (Channel 7) was directed to the E.J. Thomas Market. It took two flights before everyone could get off the roof. Thomas went last. That night Roanoke viewers watched as their state legislator was pulled to safety. Less than 90 seconds after he was on board, his store collapsed and was gone.

Tuesday morning, Nov. 5, 1985: Voting begins but not everywhere

Fitz-Hugh got no sleep that night. The phone kept ringing with frantic calls from registrars in the western part of the state about what to do. Voting places were underwater. Or roads leading to them were underwater. At 4 a.m., a lawyer for the state Republican Party called and demanded a list of precincts that were closed. Fitz-Hugh had no idea. The lawyer threatened to sue.

Polls in Virginia are supposed to open at 6 a.m., which means poll workers have to arrive earlier than that to get things set up. From the Roanoke Valley to Rockingham County, though, the flood had made that impossible in some places. Not until later that morning did Fitz-Hugh get a clear picture of what the situation was: There were 17 cities and counties where polling places were closed. This didn’t mean every precinct in those localities, but 17 places with some closures was still a shockingly high figure. Some localities figured out other places to hold the election and did their best to let voters know. In some rural localities, there simply were no other places to set up until the floodwaters went down. In Deerfield in Augusta County and Glen Wilton in Botetourt County, precincts didn’t open until 9 a.m. The Big Valley precinct in Highland County didn’t open until noon. These were all tiny precincts — just 36 voters in Big Valley — but still . . . In other places, the power was out, so poll workers lit candles to help voters see their ballots.

Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 5, 1985: In Botetourt County, a frantic get-out-the-vote campaign once roads opened to one precinct

In Botetourt County, one precinct voted at James River High School — but many voters couldn’t get in or out. As the school’s name implies, it’s within sight of the James River. Many students and teachers had simply spent the night there because they couldn’t get home. Not until 6 p.m did the main road to the school reopen. That left an hour to get people to the polls. The Jordan family swung into action, mounting their own private get-out-the-vote campaign for the Democrats. Debbie Jordan was a legislative aide for Roanoke state Sen. Granger Macfarlane; Tommy Jordan was a railroad union leader and longtime Democratic organizer. Their 14-year-old daughter, Sherry, went door-to-door in their neighborhood to alert three Democratic families. When the Jordans set out to drive to the polling place, they came to a state police checkpoint; the trooper took down their names and license plate in case they didn’t come back.

The road might be open but it wasn’t necessarily safe.

When the Jordans got to the school, the students who had been forced to spend more than a day there crowded around them and asked for information — they had heard very little about what was going on. They asked particularly about Big Daddy’s, a restaurant that served as a popular hangout. She didn’t have the heart to tell them that Big Daddy’s was gone — washed away, just like Vic Thomas’ store and those chlorine tanks at the paper mill in Big Island.

Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 5, 1985: The unexpected call to evacuate Riverville

Taylor says the call to evacuate Riverville “came out of the blue.” The voting place at St. James Methodist United Church wasn’t near any high water, but state police had ordered everything within a half-mile of the river evacuated. State police were prepared: They had a helicopter available to fly poll workers out, if necessary. “We were laughing — a helicopter!” Taylor says. State police weren’t joking, though. Those chlorine tanks were moving fast and could rupture at any minute. When they said Riverville must be evacuated now, they meant now.

Taylor called Fitz-Hugh in Richmond for guidance. She had little to offer except that everything had to be done “properly” — however Taylor could define that on the fly.

Fitz-Hugh was adamant, though: The precinct couldn’t shut down. Voting had to continue somewhere — and that somewhere had to be within the Riverville voting area.

The name “Riverville” suggests a town, but it’s not one. It’s not even a built-up place; it’s more of a concept. The highway sign for Riverville doesn’t appear until Riverville Road dead-ends at the railroad tracks that run along the James River. There really wasn’t much there, except for houses and a containerboard mill. But now Taylor had to find some place to move the voting. There was really only one other place available: The Dixie Grocery, a mile or so away— and further from the river.

Fortunately, the owner, Jessee James Tyree, was willing to help. More than willing — he was delighted. He thought this might bring in some extra customers.

Riverville was the smallest precinct in Amherst, with only about 100 votes, which meant that it was small enough that it was allowed to use only paper ballots. That was a lucky break: That meant no bulky voting machines to be hauled away, but dealing with paper ballots presented its own challenge.

First, the uncast ballots were counted and the number documented. Two poll workers then went with them in one state police car. Another poll worker and a local electoral board member who was in the area rode with the ballot box of cast ballots in another state police car.

Once they were at the Dixie Grocery, the poll workers counted the uncast ballots again to verify the number was the same as before. It was. Others scurried to set up the store as a polling place.

The Pac-Man machine became the voting booth. It didn’t really offer much privacy but the video screen was at least reasonably flat.

Taylor guesses the whole process took about 30-40 minutes. To make up for the lost time, everybody involved agreed to keep the precinct open that much longer after the usual 7 p.m closing time; that was consistent with court cases where judges have ordered precincts kept open longer to make up for electrical outages or other delays. State police directed voters from the old polling place to the new one, but only about 10 people voted after the precinct was moved. Given the small size of the precinct, that may have been all who would have voted late in the day anyway.

“It really was very smooth,” Taylor says. He doesn’t remember any party observers being at Riverville; it was such a small place it never drew that kind of attention, although the Dixie Grocery owner was a little nervous about how long he’d have to keep the store open past its usual 8 p.m. closing time.

By then, other localities across Virginia were starting to report their results.

The aftermath: The flood may have changed one election outcome

The evacuation of the Riverville precinct was a small, local drama — one of many that played out that day. The 1985 election was a historic one for Virginia is ways that matter far more than the flood. The Democratic ticket swept that year, with Wilder breaking the color barrier and Terry breaking the gender barrier. It was generally agreed at the time that the flood did not influence the statewide results. The Democratic margins were simply too big — and the flood had hit Democratic and Republican precincts alike.

The one exception was a House of Delegates district in the Shenandoah Valley, where Democrat Paul Cline of Harrisonburg was challenging Republican incumbent Phoebe Orebaugh of Rockingham County. She lived near Broadway and many voters in that part of the county couldn’t get to the polls. Cline’s voters in Harrisonburg were comparatively high and dry. Cline won, in an upset. Two years later, Orebaugh won the seat back.

Forty years later, many of the people involved in that year’s election are no longer with us. The Riverville precinct is no longer with us, either; it’s been consolidated into the New Glasgow precinct. Even the church where Riverville voted has closed; it’s been converted into a private residence. The new owner, Kathy Blanchard, said that when she bought the building, there were still crayons left out in what had been rooms for children. “It looked as if everyone had just left,” she said.

The Dixie Grocery where voting was moved has shut down, as well. Taylor, the registrar then, is a restaurant owner now — of the three Market at Main locations in Lynchburg.

To this day, he never has heard where those floating chlorine tanks wound up. “Maybe Richmond?”