At least 25 people died — including four children — when torrential rains inundated towns in the Appalachian Mountains, Kentucky’s governor said Saturday.
“We continue to pray for the families who have suffered an immeasurable loss,” Gov. Andy Bescher said. “Some have lost almost everyone in their household.”
Bescher said the toll is likely to rise significantly and it could take weeks to find all the victims of the record-breaking flash flood. Rescue teams continue to struggle to reach the hard-hit areas, some of them among the poorest places in America.
“I’m worried we’re going to be finding bodies for weeks,” Bescher said during a lunchtime briefing.
He said a search and rescue operation was still active to save as many people as possible. Crews have made more than 1,200 rescues from helicopters and boats, the governor said.
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Beshear, who flew over parts of the flood-hit region on Friday, described it as “just complete devastation, the likes of which we’ve never seen”.
“We are committed to full recovery efforts to get these people back on their feet,” he said. “But for now, we’re just praying we don’t lose anyone else.”
The rain stopped early Friday after parts of eastern Kentucky received between 8 and 10 inches in 48 hours. But some waterways were not expected to crest until Saturday.
“We just hope we can get help”
In the small community of Garrett on Saturday, flood-soaked sofas, tables and cushions were lined up in yards along the foothills as people worked to clear debris and shovel mud from driveways and roads.
In nearby Wayland, Philip Michael Caudill worked to clear debris and salvage what he could from the home he shares with his wife and three children. The waters had receded from the house, but left a mess behind, along with questions about what he and his family would do next.
Philip Michael Caudill shows a photo of his flooded home in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, on Saturday. (Dylan Lowan/Associated Press)
“We’re just hoping we can get some help,” said Caudill, who is staying with his family at Jenny Wiley State Park in a free room for now.
Caudill, a Garrett community firefighter, went out on the rescue around 1 a.m. Thursday, but had to ask to leave around 3 a.m. so he could get home, where the water was rising quickly.
“That’s what made it so hard for me,” he said. “Here I am sitting there watching my house go under water and you have people begging for help. And I couldn’t help,” he said, because he had to take care of his own family.
The water was up to his knees when he got home and he had to walk across the yard and carry two of his children out to the car. He barely managed to close the door of his SUV as they drove away.
Patricia Colombo, 63, of Hazard, Kentucky, was stranded when her car got stuck in floodwaters on a state highway. Colombo began to panic as the water began to surge. Even though her phone was dead, she saw a helicopter overhead and waved it down. The helicopter crew radioed a ground crew who pulled her to safety.
Patricia Colombo is seen near a flooded car in Jackson on Friday. (Dylan Lowan/Associated Press)
Colombo stayed the night at her fiancé’s home in Jackson, and the two took turns sleeping, repeatedly checking the water with flashlights to see if it was rising. Although her car was a loss, Colombo said others have fared worse in a region where poverty is endemic.
“Many of these people cannot recover here. They have homes that are half under water, they’ve lost everything,” she said.
It’s the latest in a string of catastrophic floods that have hit parts of the US this summer, including St. Louis, Missouri, earlier this week and again on Friday. Scientists warn that climate change is making weather disasters more frequent.
As precipitation pounded Appalachia this week, water cascaded over hills and into valleys and hollows, where it swelled creeks and streams that flowed through small towns. The torrent engulfed homes and businesses and wrecked vehicles. Mudslides pinned some people down steep slopes.
US President Joe Biden declared a federal disaster to direct relief funds to more than a dozen Kentucky counties.
“We still have a lot to look for”
Floodwaters raging in the Appalachian Mountains were so fast that some people trapped in their homes could not be immediately reached, Floyd County Judge-Executive Robbie Williams said.
Just to the west in hard-hit Perry County, authorities said some people remain unaccounted for and nearly everyone in the area has sustained some kind of damage.
“We still have a lot to look for,” said Jerry Stacey, the county’s director of emergency management.
A lifeboat is seen in a flooded street in Breathitt County, Ky., on Thursday. (Wolf County Search and Rescue/Reuters)
Flooding extended into West Virginia and southern West Virginia.
Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency for six counties in West Virginia, where flooding downed trees, knocked out power and blocked roads. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin also issued an emergency declaration, allowing officials to mobilize resources in the flooded southwestern part of the state.
Portions of some state roads in Kentucky were blocked due to flooding or mudslides. Rescue crews in Virginia and West Virginia worked to reach people where roads were impassable.
About 18,000 utility customers in Kentucky were without power early Saturday, poweroutage.us reported.
“Battle of the Extremes”
The deluge came two days after record rainfall around St. Louis dropped more than 12 inches (31 cm) and killed at least two people. Last month, heavy rain on top of mountain snow in Yellowstone National Park caused historic flooding and the evacuation of more than 10,000 people. In both cases, the deluge of rain far exceeded forecasters’ predictions.
Extreme rains are becoming more common as climate change scorches the planet and alters weather patterns, scientists say. That’s a growing challenge for disaster officials because the models used to predict storm impacts are based in part on past events and can’t handle increasingly devastating flash floods and heat waves like those that recently hit the Pacific Northwest and the Southern Plains.
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“There is a battle of extremes going on in the United States right now,” said University of Oklahoma meteorologist Jason Furtado.
“These are things that we expect to happen because of climate change. . . . A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, and that means you can get more heavy rainfall.”
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