Woman loses childhood home to flood as husband survives clinging to a tree for hours

DAMASCUS, Va. (Gray News) - A woman in Virginia lost her childhood home and nearly lost her husband in the floodwaters brought by Helene.

When the flooding began to carry Linda McMurray’s home away, she and her husband, Carl, took life jackets to the second floor.

“It went like a bulldozer down through there, pushing outbuildings out of the way,” said Carl McMurray in an interview with WYCB. “We traveled about two football fields and ended up on some higher ground and stopped. And I thought this is going to be good.

That is, however, when the trouble really started.

Their house began to break apart and Carl McMurray was carried away downstream. He was left clinging to a tree for hours.

Both of them had thought they had lost the other forever.

“It was horrible. Every time a log would hit the building, I thought it would push us on down, it was so swift all around us,” Linda McMurray said.

Linda McMurray said that she was left alone in the dark second floor, with only the light from her watch.

“All night I kept praying, repeating the Lord’s prayer, and the 23rd psalm,” she said.

About three hours in, Carl McMurray was able to flag down a neighbor who called for help.

An hour later a helicopter showed up.

“I don’t know the guy’s name from the chopper, but they did a really good job,” Carl McMurray said.

Meanwhile, Linda McMurray was stuck in what was left of her home for 16 hours before she was rescued, using afghan blankets to stay warm.

“I was dry all night, I never did get wet only my feet. There was a roof over me. And I ended up in my little sewing craft room,” Linda McMurray said. “My sewing machine was still sitting there, with quilt pieces I had been working on. But I was there 16 hours.”

Copyright 2024 Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved. WCYB and CNN Newsource contributed to this report.