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Flooded Kentucky Tired of Another Natural Disaster

HAZARD, Ky.- Firefighters and the National Guard have flooded into Eastern Kentucky after days of deadly flooding, rescuing hundreds of people trapped in dangerous waters.

Also prepare to send a delegation: the tiny community of Bremen, Ky., nearly 300 miles away. When Bremen was devastated last year by one of the worst tornadoes in state history, the mayor from a small town in the eastern part of the state came to help clean up. That town, Hindman, was one of the hardest hit in this week’s floods. So the mayor of Bremen immediately began planning trips across the state with trucks laden with supplies — even as his community continued to rebuild.

“I said, ‘You were here in December and helped us,’” Mayor Allen Miller of Bremen told the mayor of Hindman in a phone call. “” Now it’s time for me to return the favor. “

Officials have organized efforts like these as a testament to a benevolence that is deeply ingrained in Kentucky’s culture, a spirit forged through generations of hardship in which communities must depend. each other to overcome.

But that cycle of support is also a stark reminder of the chaos caused by natural disasters in recent months and will make it harder to recover from the latest disaster. Officials said on Saturday that at least 25 people were killed in the flooding, but it could take weeks to clear the full extent of the damage.

“I wish I could tell you why we continue to be attacked here in Kentucky,” Governor Andy Beshear said during a briefing in which he updated residents on the death toll. increased and expressed the feelings of distress and burnout that many in the state have felt after recurring disasters, including a powerful ice storm last year that cut power to 150,000 people in eastern Kentucky, Flash floods last July left many people stranded in their homes and rare tornadoes in December created a path of destruction nearly 200 miles long and killed 80 people.

“I wish I could tell you why areas where people may not have much continue to suffer and lose everything,” the governor continued. “I can’t tell you why, but I know what we have to do to respond to that. And the answer is all we can do.”

These disasters – especially floods and tornadoes – will be incredible obstacles for any community. But here they are particularly afflicted rural areas, which have been deeply traumatized by decades of decline.

“These places haven’t thrived before, noting coal industry erosion and job losses,” said Jason Bailey, executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, a nonpartisan think work in the manufacturing industry. “To get back to where they used to be is a long road.”

For communities flooded by major floods, that road has only just begun.

The worst of the devastation was concentrated in about half a 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 are still without power.

Houses are pulled from their foundations. Bridges have drifted, rendering some remote communities inaccessible. “I have seen ditches formed in places where there are no ditches due to fast flowing water,” said Dan Mosley, executive director of Harlan County.

His community has only experienced mild flooding, he said, so for the past several days, he has accompanied workers from the county Department of Transportation in dump trucks equipped with snow plows to clear up the debris. roads are clogged with mud and debris in neighboring communities. The worst devastation he saw was in Knott and Letcher Counties.

“The tragic loss is hard to put into words,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my career or even my life.”

In Breathitt County, at least four deaths have been confirmed, about a dozen people are missing, and most of the county remains under water. Many homes in the sparsely populated district remain inaccessible. The community has struggled to find a foothold after the recent flooding.

Hargis Epperson, county coroner, said: “We had another flood, a record flood, not 12 months ago, and so many families have begun to find their lives again. surname. “Now it’s happening again, this time worse. Everyone loses everything, twice. “

In Hazard, a city of just over 5,200 people in Perry County, 24 adults, five children and four dogs took shelter at First Presbyterian Church – a number that is almost certain to grow in the coming days. . Their home was flooded or wiped out by a landslide.

Tracy Counts, a Red Cross worker at the church, said some of them arrived wet and covered in mud. All she has to offer them are baby wipes; no running water.

Ms Counts said: “It makes it a more difficult puzzle to solve, but we are adapting and making it a reality. “It’s hard to ask for help when we’re all in the same boat.”

Melissa Hensley Powell, 48, is taken to church after being rescued from her home in Hardshell, an unincorporated area of ​​Breathitt County. She and her boyfriend pulled his paralyzed brother out of the house and brought him a mattress to lie on. They keep him dry by keeping trash bags and umbrellas over him.

Two days after being rescued, while eating Little Caesars pizza and bottled water for lunch, she said the gravity of what she was suffering was seeping in. “We’re still in that adrenaline rush.”

At the church, one congregation rented portable toilets. People have dropped water, blankets and dog food, donations filled some benches.

Counts said: “I know people have this image of Eastern Kentucky, and acknowledge the painful perception of people outside the area as poor and backward. “But we were the first to step up. We were the first to ask, ‘How can we help?’ “

But now, an onslaught of natural disasters is testing that spirit of support in profound ways.

It’s hard to link a single weather event to climate change, but flooding and tornadoes have highlighted the trauma facing Kentucky. For some, it also highlights failures in preparation, as experts warn of heavier rainfall, flash floods are becoming shorter in duration but stronger in intensity and weather patterns. general weather becomes more erratic.

“Please note that this is a new normal of extremely catastrophic events that will hit our most vulnerable communities.,Alex Gibson, executive director of Appalshop, an arts and education center in Whitesburg, Ky.

In large areas of the state currently facing the consequences of floods and tornadoes, infrastructure has fallen short and communities have become impoverished, Mr. Bailey said. “We have people living on the margins,” he said.

“A lot of wealth has been exploited,” he said. “Literally, in a terrain that has been stripped of, literally, trees and mountain slopes, floods in particular have become more likely, more risky, more dangerous – that’s what we are doing.” see.”

And as communities want to rely on each other to recover from devastation, it will be difficult to summon the necessary resources on their own.

“The tension has been enormous,” Judge Mosley, who is also an official with the Association of Kentucky Counties, said of the widespread consequences of major disasters.

Without outside support, “this won’t be solved,” he said. “The resources of the federal government and our faith in God are the only things that get us through this.”

Shawn Hubler contribution report.

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