HAZARD, Ky. — Firefighters and National Guard crews swept into eastern Kentucky after days of deadly flooding, rescuing hundreds of people trapped in dangerous water.
Also preparing to send a delegation: the small community of Bremen, Kentucky, nearly 300 miles away. When Bremen was ripped apart last year by one of the worst tornadoes in state history, the mayor of a small town in the eastern part of the state came to help with the cleanup. That town, Hindman, was among the hardest hit by the flooding this week. So Bremen’s mayor immediately began planning trips around the state with trucks full of supplies — even as his own community continued to rebuild.
“I said, ‘You were here in December and you helped us,'” Mayor Alan Miller of Bremen told the Hindman mayor in a phone call. “Now it’s time to return the favor.”
Officials dismissed efforts like these as evidence of a kind of generosity ingrained in Kentucky’s culture, a spirit forged by generations of hardship in which communities had to rely on each other to get by.
But this cycle of support is also a stark reminder of the turbulence caused by the natural disaster that has engulfed the country in recent months and will make recovery from the latest disaster even more difficult. Officials said on Saturday that at least 25 people had been killed in the floods, but it could take weeks for the full extent of the human toll and physical devastation to be known.
“I wish I could tell you why we keep getting hit here in Kentucky,” Gov. Andy Beshear said during a briefing where he informed residents of the rising death toll and showed a sense of grief and exhaustion that many in the state is experiencing after repeated disasters, including a powerful ice storm last year that knocked out power to 150,000 people in eastern Kentucky, flash flooding last July that left many stranded in their homes, and rare tornadoes in December that claimed nearly 200 miles of destruction and 80 people killed.
“I wish I could tell you why areas where people may not have much keep getting hit and losing everything,” the governor continued. “I can’t tell you why, but I know what we’re doing in response to it. And the answer is all we can.
These disasters – especially floods and tornadoes – would be stunning setbacks for any community. But here they were particularly devastating, hitting rural areas already deeply vulnerable after decades of decline.
“These places weren’t booming before,” said Jason Bailey, executive director of the Kentucky Economic Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, noting the erosion of the coal industry and the loss of manufacturing jobs. “It’s a long way to even get back to where they were.”
For the communities inundated by the powerful floods, this journey is just beginning.
The worst of the devastation is concentrated in roughly a half-dozen counties in the Appalachian region on the eastern edge of the state. At least 14 people, including four children, have died in Knott County, officials said. More than 1,400 people have been rescued by boats and helicopters, and thousands remain without electricity.
Houses were pulled from their foundations. Bridges have been swept away, leaving some remote communities inaccessible. “I’ve seen ditches where there weren’t any ditches because of the water coming in,” said Dan Moseley, Harlan County Judge Executive.
His community experienced only minor flooding, he said, so for the past few days he has accompanied county transportation department workers with dump trucks equipped with snowplows to clear roads blocked by mud and debris in neighboring communities. The worst destruction he saw was in Knott and Letcher Counties
“The sheer catastrophic loss is hard to put into words,” he said. “I’ve just never seen anything like it in my career or even in my life.”
In Braithwaite County, at least four deaths were confirmed, approximately a dozen people were unaccounted for and much of the county remained under water. Many homes in the sparsely populated county were still unaffordable. The community was already struggling to find its footing after the latest flood.
“We had another flood, a record flood, not 12 months ago and a lot of families were just starting to get their lives back on track,” said Hargis Epperson, county coroner. “Now everything happened again, this time worse. Everyone has lost everything, twice.
In Hazard, a town of just over 5,200 people in Perry County, 24 adults, five children and four dogs had taken shelter at the First Presbyterian Church, a number that was almost certain to climb in the coming days. Their homes were flooded or swept away by mudslides.
Some of them arrived wet and caked with mud, said Tracy Counts, a Red Cross worker at the church. All he could offer them were baby wipes; there was no running water.
“It makes the puzzle harder to solve, but we’re adapting and making it happen,” Ms. Counts said. “It’s hard to ask for help when we’re all in the same boat.”
Melissa Hensley Powell, 48, was brought to the church after being rescued from her home in Hardshell, an unincorporated area of Breathheath County. She and her friend had carried her brother, who is paralyzed, out of their house and then brought out a mattress for him to lie on. They kept him dry by holding garbage bags and umbrellas over him.
Two days after her rescue, while eating a lunch of Little Caesars pizza and bottled water, she said the weight of what she had endured had sunk in. “It’s starting,” she said. “We’re still on that adrenaline rush.”
In the church, a congregant rented portable toilets. People left water, blankets and dog food, the donated items filled some of the benches.
”I know people have this image of Eastern Kentucky,” Ms. Counts said, acknowledging the painful perception among outsiders of the region as poor and backward. “But we are the first to step up. We are the first to ask, “How can we help?”
But now the onslaught of disasters was testing that spirit of support in a profound way.
It’s difficult to link a single weather event to climate change, but the floods and tornadoes highlighted the vulnerability Kentucky faces. For some, it also highlighted failures in preparation, as experts warned of heavier rainfall, flash floods becoming shorter in duration but more powerful in scale, and weather patterns generally becoming more erratic.
“Let’s be clear that this is a new normal of incredibly catastrophic events that will affect our most vulnerable communities,” said Alex Gibson, executive director of Appalshop, the arts and education center in Whitesburg, Kentucky, comparing the litany of floods in eastern Kentucky with devastation facing the world’s poor island nations in the age of climate change.
In the vast swathes of the state now struggling with the effects of flooding and tornadoes, Mr. Bailey said, infrastructure was already inadequate and communities impoverished. “We have people living on the edge,” he said.
“So much of the wealth was extracted,” he said. “In topography that has been literally stripped of trees and mountain slopes, flooding in particular becomes more likely, more risky, more dangerous — that’s what we’re seeing.”
And as much as communities want to rely on each other to recover from the devastation, it would be difficult to muster the necessary resources alone.
“The strain was tremendous,” Judge Moseley, who also serves on the Kentucky Association of Counties, said of the widespread effects of major disasters.
Without outside support, “it would be unviable,” he said. “The resources of the federal government and our faith in God are the only things that will get us through this.”
Sean Hubler contributed reporting.
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