• Car barrels through Virginia parade crowd, injuring at least 50, official says

    Earl Neikirk / Bristol Herald Courier via AP

    Emergency personnel attend to the injured after a car veered into paradegoers in Damascus, Va., on Saturday, injuring dozens.

    By Debra McCown, The Associated Press

    DAMASCUS, Va. -- An elderly driver plowed into dozens of hikers marching in a Saturday parade in a small Virginia mountain town and investigators were looking into whether he suffered a medical emergency before the accident.


    About 50 to 60 people suffered injuries ranging from critical to superficial, but no fatalities were reported. Three of the worst injured were flown by helicopter to area hospitals. Their conditions weren't immediately available.

    Another 12 to 15 victims were taken to hospitals by ambulance and the rest were treated at the scene, where some paramedics and other first-responders were participating in the parade.

    It happened around 2:10 p.m. during the Hikers Parade at the Trail Days festival, an annual celebration of the Appalachian Trail in Damascus, near the Tennessee state line about a half-hour drive east of Bristol.

    Damascus Police Chief Bill Nunley didn't release the driver's name or age but said he was participating in the parade and he had traversed the Appalachian Trail in the past. Multiple witnesses described him as an elderly man.

    Nunley said the man's 1997 Cadillac was one of the last vehicles in the parade and the driver might have suffered an unspecified medical problem when his car accelerated to about 25 mph and struck the crowd on a two-lane bridge along the town's main road. The driver was among those taken to hospitals.

    Witnesses in southwestern Virginia said a car drove into a crowd at a parade Saturday and hurt several people. NBC's Lester Holt reports.

    "It is under investigation and charges may be placed," Nunley said.

    Witnesses said the car had a handicapped parking sticker and it went more than 100 feet before coming to a stop.

    "He was hitting hikers," said Vickie Harmon, a witness from Damascus. "I saw hikers just go everywhere."

    Amanda Puckett, who was watching the parade with her children, ran to the car, where she and others lifted the car off those pinned underneath.

    "Everybody just threw our hands up on the car and we just lifted the car up," she said.

    Keith Neumann, a hiker from South Carolina, said he was part of the group that scrambled around the car. They pushed the car backward to free a woman trapped underneath and lifted it off the ground to make sure no one else was trapped.

    "There's no single heroes. We're talking about a group effort of everybody jumping in," he said.

    Nunley cited quick action by police, firefighters, paramedics and hikers to tend to the victims, including a volunteer firefighter who dove into the car to turn off the ignition. The firefighter, whose name wasn't released, suffered minor injuries.

    Mayor Jack McCrady encouraged people to attend the festival on Sunday, its final day.

    "In 27 years of this, we've never had anything of this magnitude, and is it our job to make sure it doesn't happen again," he said.

    McCrady said a donation fund was being set up to assist the injured, some of whom don't have medical insurance.

    "We want to make sure they don't suffer any greater loss than they already have," he said. 

    © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Foot of snow: Sandy brings blizzard conditions to West Virginia

    As the East Coast is left reeling from Sandy, West Virginia is experiencing a storm that has dropped almost two feet of snow on some areas and is expected to intensify before it gets better. The Weather Channel's Janel Klein reports.

    Vicki Smith / AP

    Snow covers the streets Tuesday, after Superstorm Sandy moved through Elkins, W.Va. Sandy buried parts of West Virginia under more than a foot of snow on Tuesday, cutting power to at least 243,000 customers and closing dozens of roads. At least one death was reported.

    By NBC News and wire services

    Wet snow and high winds spinning off the edge of Superstorm Sandy spread blizzard conditions over parts of West Virginia and neighboring Appalachian states Tuesday, shutting one interstate as trucks and cars bogged down and knocking out power to many.

    The National Weather Service said more than a foot of snow was reported in lower elevations of West Virginia, where most towns and roads are. High elevations in the mountains were getting more than two feet and a blizzard warning for parts of the state was in effect until Wednesday afternoon.

    Nearly 265,000 people in West Virginia were without power on Tuesday morning, according to The Charleston Gazette.

    In Elkins, a city of about 7,000 people, power went out across town before dawn and the only lights were from passing snow plows as heavy, wet flakes piled up to about 8 inches.

    Authorities closed more than 45 miles of Interstate 68 on either side of the West Virginia-Maryland state line because of blizzard conditions and stuck cars.

    On the Maryland side, crews were trying to remove several tractor-trailers stuck on the highway. Four or five passenger vehicles also were abandoned in the median, State Highway Administration spokeswoman Kelly Boulware said.


    The higher elevations in western parts of Maryland received more than a foot of snow since Monday afternoon, and it was still snowing Tuesday before dawn, Boulware said.

    Police rescued several stranded motorists on the interstate in West Virginia, according to a spokeswoman for the state's Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

    Bruce Schreiner / AP

    Fred Brugge of Lexington, Ky., clears snow from his car windshield on Tuesday, at Jenny Wiley State Resort Park at Prestonsburg in eastern Kentucky. Snow settled in across portions of Kentucky's Appalachian region as part of Superstorm Sandy hitting the eastern U.S.

    Officials in West Virginia said a woman was killed Monday in a storm-related traffic accident. A spokeswoman for Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said about 5 inches of snow had fallen in the area of Tucker County where the crash occurred, making road conditions treacherous.

    A West Virginia state official told The Charleston Gazette that it's better if people stay off the roads.

    "It's hazardous out there. It's definitely not over," state spokeswoman Leslie Fitzwater told the Gazette. "Stay in if you can, don't venture out. We need the roads open for first responders to get out there and do the work they need to do."

    A significant winter storm continued in northeast Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains, where the National Weather Service forecast continuing snow showers over the higher elevations through Wednesday morning.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Miners eat into the Appalachians

    Mario Tama / Getty Images

    An explosive is detonated at an A & G Coal Corporation surface mining operation in the Appalachian Mountains on April 16, in Wise County, Va. Critics refer to this type of mining as 'mountaintop removal mining' which has destroyed 500 mountain peaks and at least 1,200 miles of streams while leading to increased flooding. The Appalachians are some of the oldest mountains on Earth.

    Mario Tama / Getty Images

    An explosive is detonated at an A & G Coal Corporation surface mining operation in the Appalachian Mountains on April 16, in Wise County, Va.

    Mario Tama / Getty Images

    A & G Coal Corporation surface mining operations continue in the mist in the Appalachian Mountains on April 18, in Wise County, Va.

    By Katie Cannon, Senior Multimedia Editor

    These frames reminded me of a 2009 piece by Yale Environment 360 and MediaStorm entitled Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining.

  • Former steelworker hopes $2 billion chemical plant will revive Appalachia city

    Jason Cohn / Reuters

    First year apprentice ironworker George Vacheresse pauses during a class at Ironworkers Local 539 in Wheeling, West Virginia. Vacheresse was a steelworker for 17 years but decided to retrain after watching layoffs erode the workforce at his machinist shop over 17 years. He hopes his new skills will lead to a much higher-paying job.

    Jason Cohn / Reuters

    The town of Wheeling, West Virginia is emblematic of the economically struggling region it sits in, and could get a big boost from a new Shell chemical plant planned for the area. Real estate agents, restaurants, banks and others report a business jump that they expect to be made permanent by the arrival of chemical plants.

    Reuters reports from Wheeling, West Virginia — In George Vacheresse's lifetime, Appalachia has fallen from its prime when steel mills and coal mines anchored middle-class communities and offered hope there always would be enough work to go around.

    In this historically poor region nestled in the misty mountains of the eastern United States, most steel mills shut down long ago and the coal workforce has shrunk by 90 percent in the past 40 years.

    Now Vacheresse and other residents are counting on cheap natural gas from the massive reserves in the Marcellus and Utica shale rock formations to reinvigorate the region's economy.

    In the Northern Appalachia area alone, where West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania converge, billions of dollars of investment is planned by major companies, including most recently Royal Dutch Shell, to recover the gas and build new chemical plants.

    "I hope it gives us jobs for everybody," said Vacheresse, 39, who last fall joined an apprentice scheme at a Wheeling, iron workers' labor union to learn how to work in steel construction. He made the move after watching layoffs erode the workforce at his machinist shop over 17 years. He expects his new skills will lead to a much higher-paying job building Shell's planned new $2 billion cracker, industry slang for a chemical plant.

    "Something like this could carry our region for years and years," he said. Read the full story.

    Jason Cohn / Reuters

    Charles Comas, owner of Comas Family Barber Shop on Main Street in Wheeling, West Virginia, finishes giving a hair cut to regular customer John Oliver on March 6, 2012. Oliver, who has lived in Wheeling his whole life, remembers when the now sparsely occupied downtown was so packed with people "you couldn't walk down the street without bumping into someone." He is skeptical that the burgeoning shale gas industry or the rumoured Shell cracker plant will help the city.

    Jason Cohn / Reuters

    A community garden is seen in a vacant lot left over from one of few demolished buildings on Main Street in Wheeling, West Virginia. The city is struggling to find creative ways to deal with their down economy while waiting for new investment.

    Jason Cohn / Reuters

    First year Ironworker apprentices (left-right) Ian Welshhans, Daniel Truax and Jason Taylor practice their welding skills during a class at the Ironworkers Local 549 training facility in Wheeling, West Virginia on March 6, 2012.

    Jason Cohn / Reuters

    An old Ohio Edison electric plant, rumored to be the site for the first new U.S. chemical cracker plant in more than 20 years, is seen across the Ohio river from Moundsville, West Virginia.