HAZARD, Ky. – Shirley Stamper, 74, woke up to the sound of wild banging under her house. Floods swallowed her remote mountain community and Ms Stamper, along with her mother-in-law, Ethel Stamper, 94, had to get out immediately.
Not long after, as the water rose rapidly around them, Mrs Stamper found herself standing barefoot in the mud, barely clothed, as rescuers in a National Guard helicopter urged her to climb aboard. She turned to her mother-in-law.
“I said, ‘Ethel, are you getting in that helicopter?’” Ms Stamper recalled on Friday, sitting in the auditorium of the Gospel Light Baptist Church along with dozens of others who had been left homeless in the region-wide devastation. “She said, ‘Yes, I am.'”
The rain continued to fall in parts of eastern Kentucky Friday, and creeks and rivers are still swelling. But as the water receded, the devastation of the past two days slowly but horribly came into view. At least 25 people were killed, according to reports from the governor’s office and local officials.
Governor Andy Beshear repeatedly said the toll would almost certainly rise.
In the rugged topography of central Appalachia, many places were still closed on Friday, and determining the toll of the devastation could take weeks. More rain was forecast for early next week, making rescue efforts even more urgent. “We’ll have to act quickly when the water drops tomorrow,” Mr. Beshear said, “especially before it starts to rain again.”
In Breathitt County, Jeffrey Noble, the executive judge, said the storm and flooding had disabled phones for miles. Even in Jackson’s county seat, he said, major roads and arterial roads were still blocked.
“They say about 250 people are missing,” he said. “I don’t even want to talk about the dead. I’ve heard two different songs and I hope they’re both wrong.”
He was shocked by the stories he’d heard from people in the county and by the things he’d seen firsthand, including a truck he’d seen when it was slowly overtaken by water in the middle of the night.
“Houses are being washed away, communities are being washed away, roads are being washed away,” Mr Noble said. “I’ve heard of centennial floods, but this goes way beyond that. Our county has never seen anything like it in Kentucky history.”
The death toll rose throughout the day on Friday. Perry County’s Emergency Management Director, Jerry Stacy, said the number of casualties rose from one to four by the evening. Breathitt County coroner Hargis Epperson said at least three in the county are dead from the floods, with at least a dozen missing. And Knott County coroner Corey Watson, who was working out of a large garage at a local funeral home, said Friday he had confirmed 14 fatalities, up from 11 since that morning.
“People are still missing,” Mr Watson added.
What became known on Friday was already heartbreaking. The dead included at least six children, including four from one family.
Riley Noble Jr., 6, and Nevaeh Noble, 4, were found Thursday, and on Friday their siblings, Maddison Noble, 8, and Chance Noble, 1, were discovered all within 50 yards of each other, a relative, Brittany said. Trejo.
When their parents received a warning about the flash food at 2 a.m. Thursday, the family had just minutes to escape, Ms. Trejo said, telling what her cousin Amber Smith, the children’s 23-year-old mother, told her. had told.
In the few minutes that Mrs. Smith was able to dress the children, water began to pour into their mobile home. The family climbed onto the trailer in the dark to await the flooding, Ms Trejo said, “but they were only there a short time before realizing their home was about to be swept away.”
Holding the older children’s hands and hugging the younger ones tightly, the family “floated” from the top of their caravan to a nearby tree, she said. There they held each other, watched their house drift away, and screamed for help. Still, the water rose higher. And “one by one,” said Mrs. Trejo, the four children were pulled from the tree by the current. “The wrath of the water took their children out of their hands,” said Ms. Trejo. After clinging to the tree for about eight hours to stay alive, the parents were rescued by a stranger in a kayak.
“They were such loving, caring, well-behaved young children,” said Mrs. Trejo. “They liked things that all kids like.”
Mr Beshear told reporters that the National Guard, State Police and other government agencies assisted in search and rescue, including about 50 aerial rescues and hundreds of boat rescues. Nearly 300 people had been rescued statewide, he said, about 100 of whom were brought to safety by planes.
Many who survived the floods were subsequently endangered by the isolation that came in the aftermath. Roads were washed away or buried in mudslides, leaving residents, many of them elderly and in poor health, trapped in flood-ravaged valleys without water or electricity. According to PowerOutage.us, which collects data from utilities, about 20,000 customers were without power Friday night in the worst-hit counties in Kentucky.
In the mountains of the central Appalachians, floods can be terrifyingly sudden, with water pouring down barren, mine-stripped slopes or pouring down during summer thunderstorms. Families living along creeks in the hollows often have little warning and few escape routes, which is why flooding in the region has been so deadly in the past. But Thursday’s floods were the worst in local memory.
“I’ve been talking to several people over the past few days who were 70, 80 years old and none of them remember anything like that,” said Jeff Hawkins, who has lived for 52 years in a Letcher County cavern now lined with flood-ravaged water. buildings and semi-sunken trucks.
The relative remoteness of many cities in central Appalachia is challenging during times like these, but it also fosters a certain kind of self-reliance. When the water rose on Thursday, neighbors took their boats into the water to find people who needed to be rescued.
After the worst was over on Thursday morning, Jamie and Julie Hatton stepped out of their Whitesburg home to find a town that was still under water in many parts. They set out to rescue a friend by kayak, but learned more had stranded when they arrived at the edge of the floodwaters.
Kayaks proved to be no match for the fast currents, Ms Hatton said, and soon people showed up in their motorboats. Letcher County attorney Mr. Hatton estimated that he spent about six hours on Thursday helping with water rescues.
“At the time it was very desperate,” Ms Hatton said.
The focus on Friday was on the cost of life, but the floods have also damaged irreplaceable storehouses of eastern Kentucky culture. The waters surging at Whitesburg, a cultural hub of this part of Appalachia, flooded the buildings of Appalshop, a 53-year-old arts and education center, flooded the radio studio and exhibit space, and sent bits of archival footage down Main Street.
In the small town of Hindman, in Knott County, the Appalachian School of Luthiery, where artisans learn the art of building dulcimers and other stringed instruments, was destroyed, said Christy Boyd, the development director for the Appalachian Artisan Center.
“There aren’t many dulcimers out there anymore,” Mrs. Boyd said. “So when you lose something, it’s not just monetary; it cannot be replaced because no one is doing it.” A similar comment can be made about many of the small towns in central Appalachia, which had been dying slowly for decades before drowning in a flash flood. “We have next to nothing, and to lose what you have,” she said, dragging away.
At a Letcher County hotel, Jeannie Adams gathered with her family and her in-laws, not knowing what the next few days would bring. The morning before, she and her son had waded from their porch through deepening waters.
“I got scared,” she said. ‘And I said, ‘Let’s go back.’ But there was no turning back. The flow of the water pulled us apart. And as a mother that was. …”
She paused to gather herself. “It was terrifying,” she said.
Along an overgrown embankment, where train tracks used to run, they made their way out of the flooded hollow to safety. But they lost their house and almost everything. “There are so many of us who have lost everything they had except the shirt on their backs,” said Ms. Adams. “And we need help. Some of us urgently need help.”
Maham Javaid, Shawn Hubler, Jesus Jimenez and Serge F. Kovaleskic reporting contributed.