Trained as a sanitary engineer, Oscar Hunter Adams had his hands full a year after he joined the Virginia Department of Health as a regional engineer in Lexington in 1968.

On Aug. 19, 1969, after Category 5 Hurricane Camille had devastated Mississippi, her winds entered Virginia as a tropical depression and stalled over the state. Over 12 hours, nearly 31 inches of rain fell.

The ensuing flash flood and mudslide killed 153 people, mostly in Nelson County, where 113 bridges washed out. Major flooding cut off communications between the Shenandoah Valley and Richmond. Damage was estimated at $113 million

"The flooding had ripped the roads apart," said his son, Robert Thomas Adams of Chesterfield County. "It looked like someone had bombed them. My father went to a gas station with a public restroom and tested the water himself. The sewage pipes had been violated, and there was sewage all over the place. He had to tell people where the pipes were getting good water and which were getting bad."

Mr. Adams, who retired as the health department's director of engineering services in the early 1980s, died Friday in a Richmond hospice. The Richmond resident was 94.

A funeral will be held Tuesday at 11 a.m. at Bliley Funeral Homes' Central Chapel, 3801 August Ave. Burial will be in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Richmond.

"He was the first person who had to deal with Kepone," said his son.

Almost 200,000 pounds of the pesticide had been dumped into the James River from a small plant in Hopewell, killing riverlife, shutting down the state oyster harvest for years, necessitating a ban on catching finfish and injuring about 75 people.

"He was the first person to confront the issue and give the initial advice on what to do," his son said.

He was responsible for public water supplies, sewer disposal, shellfish sanitation, toxic substances and, at one time, bedding and upholstered furniture and radiological health.

The District of Columbia native grew up with lots of aunts and uncles and spent time on a grandmother's farm in Vienna. Interested in the physical sciences, he earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering at Virginia Military Institute in 1936. Minutes after graduation, he married Ruth Thomas in the VMI chapel. She died in 1992.

He entered the Army in 1941.

He earned a master's degree in sanitary engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1951.

Mr. Adams retired from the Army's Medical Service Corps as a colonel in 1968. He had been responsible for the planning, developing and constructing Army hospitals around the world and often testified before Congressional appropriating committees.

He especially was praised for rebuilding Walter Reed Army Hospital, then the premier Army hospital in the world, his son said, as well as Letterman Army Hospital, at The Presidio in San Francisco.

In addition to his son, survivors include his wife of 15 years, Rebecca Monroe Adams; seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.