YEs you are correct that the local area would be devastated. However,
there would be little difference between that area and Johnstown
Pennsylvania which was also locally devastated by a flood but didn't spread
rumors of a global flood.
>Glenn rejects the Black Sea flood as a candidate for Noah's flood because
>the rate of rise of the water was too slow. (Also I suspect that such a
>flood would not have been anthropolgically universal is a consideration,
>but I want to discuss one issue at a time) I haven't read the book "Noah's
>Flood" but I remember in quotations from it that, even though the rate of
>rise wasn't great, that the velocity of the water was quite high -- perhaps
>high enough to have carried away large numbers of people to deeper water
>where they drowned. That sort of phenomenon could have given rise to flood
>accounts -- possibly like the account in Genesis. I'm not taking sides in
>this because I don't have any special knowledge or expertise. But it seems
>to me this possibility is worth discussing.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution