The time was 6 p. m., January 29, 1957. The place was the home of Bill Roll in Walkertown. The words were Roll's. Outside his window, he could see water rolling over Kentucky 15.

For 20 minutes, Roll transmitted the same words over and over again:

"Middleground 16, Hazard, Ky., calling any C. A. P. 16 with possible emergency traffic."

Only moments before he switched on the transmitter to the C. A. P. station at his, "Middleground 16", Roll and a friend, Bill Nolan, had abandoned their bottle gas business on Ky. 15 in Walkertown to the rising flood waters.

They rushed to Roll's house on Plum Street, disconnected an emergency power unit from the Hazard C. A. P. mobile broadcasting vehicle and attached it to a transmitter on Roll's porch.

Electric power facilities had already been wrecked dramatically in a flashing thunder of brilliant lights and smoke. Long distance telephone lines were out, and with the crest of the flood still hours away, Hazard was already isolated from the world. Roads were blocked by water. There was no outside communication.

While Nolan nursed the power unit with the gasoline line, Roll repeated again for the hundredth or two hundredth time:

"Middleground 16, Hazard, Ky., calling any C. A. P. 16 with possible emergency traffic." He could only hope that somewhere in these United States there would be a C. A. P. radio operator at his station who could understand that Roll had information of an emergency situation here in Hazard.

And then it came:

"This is Red Star 5, Atlanta, Georgia." It was a woman's voice. Flooded Hazard was no longer isolated from the world!

Roll went on the air at 6 p. m., Tuesday night. But for an hour's sleep, the same evening, he remained there until late Thursday night, sending and receiving messages that are in themselves another story, which will appear in a future issue of The Herald.

When contact was made with Red Star 5, his work and that of other Civil Air Patrol members here was only beginning. Before the station signed off here Friday night, the following C. A. P. members here played important rolls in communication work -- Maj. C. F. Hahn, Ben Roll. Bill's brother, Lt. Elmer Roll, Lt. Herb Bonta, Lt. Arlie Webb, Capt. Bernard Faulkner, Lt. Homer Wilson, and S-M's Tommie Stacy, Nancy Howard, Jack Wilson and Sonny Engle.

Hahn, a dentist here then but who as since departed, took off from the Hazard airport early Tuesday morning, taxiing his plane through water, and flew to London to set up a C. A. P. broadcasting unit there as a contact point for Hazard. His decision later proved wise because London was established as the rescue center fro this area.

The first message out of Hazard was from Dewey Daniel, president, Peoples Bank. After contacting Red Star 5, Roll phoned the telephone company and volunteered his services. The phone company quickly accepted them, and got in touch with Daniel.

Daniel's initial message went to Governor Chandler and Senators Morton and Cooper. It was a terse appeal for help, and an announcement the the devastation here would run into the millions.

His, however, was but the first message. Before Middleground 16 signed off Friday night, over 400 messages were sent out of Hazard of the C. A. P. Countless were received.

They were scribbled on advertising handouts, envelopes, note paper, and anything Roll and the C. A. P. could use for writing. A few were humorous. At least one, the the parents of Mr. and Mrs. George Ward, living in Ohio, was somber:

"Your son -- Raymond, was drowned last night near Hazard, Ky. Body has been sent to Craft Funeral Home in Whitesburg and is to be returned to Engle Funeral Home in Hazard. He was visiting his Uncle Taylor Stacy at Mill Creek".

Together the messages tell the dramatic story of the flood which all but wiped this community from the map three years ago. But they also reveal the heart that made the people of Hazard and Perry County come back to win over what one outsider, who viewed the devastation seven days after the flood, called "insurmountable odds."

I know -- because I was that outsider.