Whitesburg Ky Flooding 2022 - On Friday, July 29, 2022, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and FEMA officials fly over devastating flooding in eastern Kentucky.
While I stood in the nursery, stuffed animals sat unharmed on the top bunk of her bed in Letcher County. On Thursday night, water began rising in 13 eastern counties of Kentucky. About 1,800 people arrived at the Wright home in Whitesburg around 5:30 and paralyzed the community for 12 hours. At least two people have died in Letcher County. At least 25 people were killed in the region from Thursday to Friday and nearly 300 victims were rescued.
Whitesburg Ky Flooding 2022
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When I arrived in Whitesburg on Friday morning, Drake's soaked mattress and blankets strewn across the bottom bunk were still showing signs of the flood's ravages. The fury of the flood could be seen in the way the door to the boy's room was smashed from the floor to the doorknob and in the way mud had pooled on his shoes, clothes and drenched sports equipment.
"Do you want to go to our house?" Drake's mom, Casey Wright, asked me a minute ago as I stood on the lawn with her, the X-box smeared with mud, the chair saturated, the lamp broken and seemingly every bit as well. Furniture that once comfortably welcomed people into her living room.
I spent the better part of Friday morning trying to figure out how to put into words what Casey Wright wanted the world to see.
This historic flood wiped out the places these people felt safest, and there is no denying that hearts are broken and many families in eastern Kentucky are filled with grief. The pain is real and undeniable.
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But at the same time, among the dozens of people I talked to and saw throughout the day before the cleanup, I didn't see a single tear.
I saw sweat on my forehead and my hands covered in mud. I watched as family and friends gathered around the victims, who had seemingly lost everything and now had the brutal task of cleaning up what was left.
As photographer Pat McDonogh and I drove through the mountains just after breakfast on Friday, the roads were strewn with splashes of mud where water had spilled a few hours earlier. Vegetation and trash clings to the fence such as stray gloves, jeans, a bag of tortillas, and even a plastic fork that clings to leaves like odd ornaments on Christmas greens, aimed at is woven.
The closer we got to Whitesburg, the thicker the storm's muddy track and the more dangerous the debris.
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First, we parked behind the AppleShop at 91 Madison Avenue as news broke on social media late Thursday that the famous collection had been hit by a flood. This nationally known non-profit organization began as a film studio in 1969 and now serves as a radio station, theatre, public art gallery, record label, archive and film institute. Although the water receded Friday morning, it was unclear how much damage was done inside this eastern Kentucky gem.
One of the archivists, Elizabeth Barrett, and her husband, Herbie Smith, greeted us in the parking lot and told us they still couldn't get to the door to inspect the damage. Most of the collection is kept in a climate-controlled vault and he hopes it will survive.
"In some ways, this collection holds a long-term understanding of how the history of the region developed," Smith said. "Without all the film that was made, all the recordings, all the photographs that tell the true story of life, it's a huge loss."
As the couple and I waved goodbye and rounded the corner onto the sidewalk, my eyes were drawn to a strange mess of black ribbons that were stuck to a telephone pole and winding across the street.
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And indeed, hundreds of feet of film were unwound from the reels and captured among photographs, newspapers and fragments of documents. The Appleshop has preserved the history of the mountain for more than 50 years and I wondered if a single flood could wash it all away in a matter of hours.
About half an hour later we met Smith and Barrett again, and they somewhat allayed that fear. He believed that the films on the streets were copies from outdoor warehouses and not from collections.
We continued walking down Madison Street past the Kentucky Mist Distillery where workers were scrubbing mud at the entrance. From there we turned onto East Main Street, and even though I didn't see the storm, I knew where the water was at Grace's Closet. The dress form acted as a flood line with a light pink shirt, pearls and a pink handbag. The neckline and pearls of the kameez hung beautifully without any damage, while the cloth near the waist was covered in dark mud.
Flood waters tore benches, glass doors and windows from the ground, and pulled down fence posts, including their concrete anchors. As the water-stained barber's chairs stood outside I saw a red and blue barber's flag weeping mud from its pole. Kevin Brown, whose father owns the business, was moving a table out of the store and across the street when I met him. Amidst heavy breathing and drops of sweat, he told that he woke up at 6 a.m. to find his father knocking on the door.
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Brown was lucky. Their home is on higher ground, but the family business, Cut Away Barber & Beauty, was inundated with up to four feet of water. His father's house had six inches of water and one of the rental properties he owned was completely destroyed. He usually cuts hair in this building, but Brown had been in the shop since 7 a.m. cleaning what best he could.
It seemed that in front of every store weary groups of workers and volunteers were moving furniture to the sidewalk and wiping whatever they could off the door. By mid-morning, the sidewalks of the cozy center looked like a broken, waterlogged flea market.
The more we talked to people in town, the more we learned that the devastation extended far beyond the business district.
So we take Pat's car to the west side of town, where the townspeople tell us oil tanker trucks have been knocked off the rig. Sure enough, they got tangled up like monster-sized pickup poles all over the property.
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From there we followed the muddy streets into the Upper Bottom neighborhood, where we found a shed teetering as if someone balanced it like a tilting top. Nearby, a trampoline was thrown into a clump of trees like someone had thrown a stick of glue against a wall.
This is the neighborhood where I met the Drake Wright family. The Wrights were kind enough to invite me in, but make no mistake, every other house on that street was just as dilapidated.
Most homes saw at least four to five feet of water, and others were submerged in floodwaters up to their roofs. The water found its way into refrigerators and perishable vegetables and meat and pantries, leaving behind boxes of rice, pasta and cereals like crackers. Water came up the sides of wooden and plastic dresser drawers and drenched T-shirts, socks and underwear. In garages, sheds and closets, hurricanes filled the motors of tools such as drills, saws and even vacuum cleaners. Almost everything these people had that could help with the cleanup was lost in the storm.
As I watch neighbors tend to their lives on their lawns, Jerry Sornet greets us outside his home with the story of how he was awoken from his home at about 7:30 a.m. to safety in thigh-high water. He found a spot on a hill overlooking his neighborhood and watched the entire deluge from a perch.
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The sooner all outdoor furniture and drywall was removed, the less likely the mold was to take over the home and create a completely different kind of disaster. A man brought one of his nephews from Louisville to help him. Another had a son who woke up at 4 a.m. and traveled all the way from Savannah, Georgia, to help.
Chris James, who is Drake Wright's uncle, lives in Letcher County but was working in Knoxville when the storm hit. He tried to go straight home, but road closures took three hours and it turned into an eight-and-a-half-hour drive.
As I stood on the lawn with his family, James had a very clear message to share. Despite all this, if he could have reached here, surely he would have got some government help by now.
"Where's the Red Cross," he asked me, shaking his head. "Where is the water? Where is it."
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