On Thursday, rescue personnel from state agencies and the National Guard conducted a frantic search for survivors by boat and helicopter. But by Friday night, the confirmed death toll had risen to 25, with many others still missing. The dead so far are at least six children, including four from one family who clung to a tree, and each other amid flooding after escaping from a mobile home.
The parents of those children, ages 2 to 8, were rescued hours later by a man in a kayak searching for stranded neighbors. Still, Brittany Trejo, a relative, told The New York Times“The wrath of the water took their children out of their hands.”
A bright spot in Kentucky’s grief and devastation is the efforts of volunteers across the state to help rescuers locate, feed, and help people trapped by flooding or who have sought refuge from them in churches and other makeshift shelters.
Early Saturday morning, Joe Arvin, a private chef who appeared on nationally televised cooking competitions, stayed up late smoking hundreds of pounds of pork and beef at his home in Lexington, Kentucky. The meat would fill the roughly 1,000 burritos he planned to deliver to the hard-hit city of Hazard by noon.
Mr. Arvin said he expected 20 or 30 volunteers, including some members of the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team, to arrive at his home at 6 a.m. and load a convoy of pickup trucks with supplies — not just burritos, as well as the diapers, paper towels and bottled water that officials in Hazard had requested. Some of the food and supplies would be delivered to stranded residents by boat.
Mr Arvin, 51, said he had been warned that water was still high in the area and that some bridges between Lexington and Hazard were out of order. But he planned to make the two and a half hour drive anyway.