Months passed, Tom Robinette said, before he would no longer hear rushing water, even when there was none.

Robinette and 15 others employed at Gabriel Brothers along state Route 36 between Cumberland and Corriganville found themselves being slowly trapped by water that rose around the building on the morning of Jan. 19, 1996. 

The climb of the water in Wills Creek, instigated by rains that began a day earlier atop an existing snow pack, was insipid.

Numerous companies along that commercial strip went about a Friday morning of business as usual.

“I got there at 7 a.m. and could see there was water rising against the railroad tracks behind the building, but I didn’t think any more about it,” Robinette said.

Although the rain and rising waters were evident as the morning wore on, it wasn’t until a tractor-trailer from Fairmont, W.Va., was unloaded that concern kicked in.

“The driver was listening to the radio and he said ‘where’s the Fruit Bowl, it’s underwater,’” Robinette recalled.

The tractor-trailer departed, but the store’s staff remained. 

“We started extending the legs on the racks to get the clothes higher and we were putting items onto the highest shelves,” Robinette said.

The waters of Wills Creek found a way onto state Route 36 upstream of the store, encircling Gabriel Brothers’ and trapping the store’s workers.

“The water broke through a door on the loading dock and rushed into the store,” Robinette said.

The employees left the building and climbed atop a row of shopping buggies outside the store, but eventually returned inside.

“We all had wet feet and legs and then I noticed we were selling waterproof socks," Robinette said. 

Soon those were distributed as was dry footwear.

The store sold candles that were lighted to provide some warmth for hands and feet, Robinette said.

“There were no cell phones," he said. "We made a plan that if rescue came we would evacuate by age with the oldest going first.”

At 19, Robinette was the youngest. 

Hours passed.

Snacks for sale at the checkout counters offered a bit of sustenance for the water-incarcerated workers.

“Then we saw a boat out on the highway, but it was having a lot of trouble making progress," Robinette said. "It got into trouble and tied up to something and Trooper 5 (airlifted) the two people from the boat.”

Robinette said it seemed like forever, but sometime after dark, he thinks about 8 p.m., red lights could be seen out on the highway.

“I had been watching a water level mark on a wall and I told everybody it had gone down a little, but nobody believed me,” he said.

The red lights started getting closer to the store.

“It was the big truck from LaVale (VFD) and it took three trips, but they got everybody out and took us to the fire hall," he said. "When I got on the truck, two of the company’s owners from Morgantown were on it. They had driven over. Boy was that truck nice and warm.”

The employees lost their cars in the flood water.

Robinette’s was a 1983 Chevrolet Cavalier.

And it took him a while to shake the sound of flood water rushing through his head.

“I was raised in the church, so I knew everything would be OK, but we were scared, we didn’t know exactly how it was going to turn out,” Robinette said. “A couple people went to the hospital to get checked, but we made it.”

Wayne Babb of Babb Motor Sales, Locust Grove, monitored the rise of Wills Creek on Jan. 19, 1996, by placing chunks of wood on the ground between his car lot and the increasingly raging stream.

“The pieces of wood allowed me to determine how fast the creek was coming up,” Babb said, recalling that wild and wet day of 20 years ago. “At one point I decided it was time to start moving cars."

Babb and others moved the 18 cars from his lot to higher ground at the LaVale Volunteer Fire Department where he was a member.

“There was one old clunker I couldn’t get started and the flood got it,” Babb said. “I even sold a few of the cars while they were still parked at the station.”

Babb’s black Labrador retriever, Blackie, went missing as the waters rose.

“A couple of the firemen found the dog and put it in the engine truck and brought it back,” he said.

An angry Wills Creek — downstream from the damage it was causing at places such as Gabriel Brothers and car dealerships along state Route 36 — washed away Babb’s 30-by-40 garage.

An old railroad bridge that has since been removed acted as a dam and caused floodwater to back higher into the Locust Grove community.

Jim VanMeter, chief of the Corriganville Volunteer Fire Department, was also a member of the Wellersburg VFD in 1996.

“The first call was for a part of Route 160 that was water-covered at Wellersburg,” VanMeter said. “From there, calls started coming from every place.”

Corriganville sent a squad toward Mount Savage to evacuate residents, but soon that unit with four members aboard was in the middle of rising waters.

“They had to shoot a line to get out,” VanMeter said and explained that the line, once fired and anchored, was used as a handhold for the firefighters to walk through the rising water.

That vehicle was destroyed.

“An Allegany County plow truck went through a bridge over North Jennings Run,” VanMeter said. “It sat there pointing straight into the air.”

VanMeter, a veteran firefighter, said that although the 1996 flood was tragic, the worst natural disaster he ever worked was the 1998 tornado and subsequent damage.

Ken Nolan, a photographer for the Cumberland Times-News, was a student in 1996 when he was stopped by the flood waters from getting to class at Allegany College of Maryland.

“I left Mount Savage and when I got to the Woodcock Hollow area the water was over the road,” Nolan said.

“I went home and got my video camera and for the next four days took videos of the flood and the cleanup," he said.

Nolan said he was amazed to watch a speed boat motor quickly up the C&O Canal that had been overtopped by the flood at Cumberland.

He also said he saw cars on top of cars at dealerships in the Motor City area between Cumberland and Corriganville.

“I photographed the garage at Babb’s (Motor Sales) being washed away," he said. "It made it past the railroad bridge and then hit the main bridge that goes to Locust Grove.” 

ALSO READ: 

• Memories of the 1996 Cumberland area flood: 'You never forget it'

• Cumberland resident on the 1996 flood: 'I was in a state of shock for days'