In Garrett, Kentucky, a coal mining town about 200 miles east of Lexington, brown water ran down a high street and bumped into storefronts, video clips showed. Lifeboats carried people in life jackets across the sunken street, past the tops of vehicles poking through the high water.
“Everything is gone,” Garrett resident Rachel Patton told WCHS-TV as she wept. “We had to swim outside and it was cold. It went over my head. It was scary.”
At least 300 people in Kentucky have been rescued by emergency services, Beshear said. That number is likely to rise, he said, as more than 100 people have been rescued in National Guard airlifts alone.
Authorities went door to door in a low-lying area of Jackson on Thursday, evacuating people after inspectors noticed a spill seeping from the nearby Panbowl Lake Dam.
“Late last night and early this morning we thought a real breach was imminent,” said Mr Beshear, adding that officials were slightly more optimistic Friday morning.
According to Poweroutage.us, some 22,000 homes and businesses in Kentucky and 2,200 in West Virginia were without power Friday afternoon. Widespread outages of natural gas services, water treatment and communications networks were also reported, the governor said.
Flood warnings and watches remained in effect throughout the day for the eastern half of Kentucky, as well as northeastern Tennessee and western West Virginia, where more rainfall was expected to swell waterways well past the flood stage, the National Bureau said. Weather Service.
The North Fork Kentucky River near Jackson climbed more than 14 feet above the flood stage, a record early Friday, according to government observers.
According to the weather service, as much as one meter of rain has fallen in parts of the region in the past week.
President Joe Biden has declared a major disaster in Kentucky on Friday, allowing federal funding to be allocated to the state.
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice on Thursday declared a state of emergency for six counties in his state, where heavy rains caused flooding that disrupted drinking water systems and blocked roads.