At least 35 dead, hundreds still missing in eastern Kentucky flooding - 11 inches of rain in 8 hours - North Fork Kentucky River smashes record level by 5 feet (UPDATES)

Jason Hanna and Michelle Watson
CNN
Thu, 28 Jul 2022 17:52 UTC

Water nearly swallows some buildings Thursday morning in the community of Lost Creek in eastern Kentucky's Breathitt County.

[Breaking news update, published at 12:59 p.m. ET]

At least three people have died as a result of widespread flooding in eastern Kentucky -- two people in Perry County, and one in Knott County -- Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday afternoon.

"I do believe it will end up being one of the most significant, deadly floods that we have had in Kentucky in at least a very long time," Beshear said. "Unfortunately, I expect double-digit deaths in this flooding."

[Original story, published at 12:29 p.m. ET]

Eastern Kentucky is enduring "one of the worst, most devastating flooding events" in the commonwealth's history Thursday after heavy overnight rains caused untold damage and forced some residents to the roofs of their swamped homes to await rescue, the governor said.

"We expect the loss of life. Hundreds will lose their homes, and this is going to be yet another event (where) it's going to take not months, but likely years, for many families to rebuild and recover," Gov. Andy Beshear said in a news conference Thursday morning in Frankfort.

Portions of eastern Kentucky received more than 8 inches of rain from Wednesday into Thursday morning, overwhelming creeks, streams and ground already saturated from previous rain, the National Weather Service said. Flood and flash flood warnings are in effect for portions of eastern Kentucky into Thursday afternoon.

"There are a lot of people in eastern Kentucky on roofs, waiting to be rescued," and "a number of people" were unaccounted for, Beshear said Thursday morning, adding that he activated the National Guard to help with rescues and recovery.

The Guard has identified people stuck on roofs, and was "making preparations to go in and withdraw them," the state's adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Hal Lamberton, said at the news conference, without detailing where these people were.

In the small creekside town of Hindman, waist-high water turned a main road into a river before dawn, video from storm chaser Brandon Clement shows.

Barbara Wicker was worried about relatives in town, including five grandchildren, because water had surrounded their homes, she told Clement.

"I can't reach them. I can't reach 911. ... There's no help in sight," Wicker told Clement early Thursday outside in Hindman, a Knott County town roughly a 130-mile drive southeast of Lexington.

"That goes way up in there -- everybody's stuck," Hindman resident Kendra Bentley, also standing near a road outside, told Clement about floodwater surrounding homes.

Swift-water rescues have been reported Thursday in Kentucky's Perry County, including in Chavies, a community of a few hundred people roughly 30 miles west of Hindman and a 110-mile drive southeast of Lexington, the weather service said.

In the Perry County community of Buckhorn, deep floodwaters surrounded a school Thursday morning, forming a large, brown lake around the building and swallowing all but the top of a playground set, video posted to Facebook by Marlene Abner Stokely shows.

The National Guard was deploying helicopters and trucks that can move through water to deliver supplies and transport people, and Beshear also declared an emergency to help unlock other resources, he said.

Fish and wildlife workers were "out with boats, working to make water rescues where safe for their personnel," he said.

Rescue areas included a school in Breathitt County, where a couple of staff members were stranded in an otherwise empty building, Beshear said. The Guard was preparing to rescue them, Lamberton said Thursday morning.

More than 24,000 power outages were reported in Kentucky as of 11:30 a.m., mostly in the east, according to PowerOutage.us.

Water service also was interrupted in parts of eastern Kentucky Thursday, in part because pipes burst in flooding events and systems need to be shut down for repairs, Beshear said. Truckloads of water were being sent to the region, he said.

Three state parks will be available to shelter people who lost their homes, Beshear said.

More flooding is possible Thursday especially in parts of eastern Kentucky -- where another 1 to 3 inches are possible during the day -- southern West Virginia and far southwest Virginia, the weather service said.

'Please stay off the roads'

In the Breathitt County community of Jackson, floodwater swiftly ran past a home in Thursday's pre-dawn darkness, carrying a trash can and other debris with it, video recorded by Deric Lostutter showed.

Breathitt County opened its courthouse building as a shelter for those displaced by the flooding, the county's emergency management agency said on Facebook.

"Many roadways in the county are becoming covered with water and are impassable. Please stay off the roads if at all possible tonight," the post said.

Rescue crews have been unable to reach several areas due to "swift water over roadways," the emergency management agency noted.

Swollen rivers and creeks in the region spilled into the land.

Near Whitesburg, an eastern Kentucky community of more than 1,500 people near the Virginia state line, the North Fork Kentucky River surpassed its previous record height by 5 feet, according to provisional automatic data from the United States Geological Survey.

The gauge there was reading 20.91 feet at 10 a.m. Thursday; the previous record was 14.7 feet, set on January 29, 1957. The data is preliminary and will need to be reviewed, because items can become stuck to the gauge and give false readings during major flooding.

'Seemingly never-ending fire hose' of moisture across much of US

Thursday's inundation in Kentucky comes two days after record-breaking rainfall caused widespread flash flooding in the St. Louis area.

It's part of a "seemingly never-ending fire hose of monsoonal and Gulf of Mexico moisture that is producing a conveyor belt of heavy rain and thunderstorms from the Southwest to the central Appalachians," the Weather Prediction Center said Thursday morning.

A moderate risk -- or level 3 of 4 -- of excessive rainfall exists Thursday for parts of Kentucky, West Virginia and northern Tennessee -- as well as parts of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, the prediction center said.

Comment: Update July 29

The Guardian reports:

At least 16 people dead after flash flooding in Kentucky

Kentucky: rescue teams deployed after deadly flash floods

At least 16 people have died in widespread flash flooding in Kentucky, including families with children, a toll the authorities expect to rise on Friday as extreme weather hits several states.

The Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, said on Friday morning he expected to receive a federal state of emergency declaration later in the morning, which gives state governors extra powers and access to special funding to deal with such a catastrophe, and has been in contact with the White House.

He announced the latest death toll after visiting affected areas but added on Friday morning: "I expect that number to more than double, probably even throughout today."

"This comes on the back of the worst tornado disaster we have ever seen," Beshear told CNN on Friday morning, referring to the western part of the state being hit by deadly tornadoes several months ago.

Search and rescue teams backed by the national guard are searching for people missing in the record floods that have wiped out entire towns in some of the poorest places in America.

"There are hundreds of families that have lost everything," Beshear said. "And many of these families didn't have much to begin with. And so it hurts even more. But we're going to be there for them."

The flooding has hit eastern Kentucky, while extreme weather has also badly affected parts of Arizona, Missouri with flooding, and Nevada, where parts of the main commercial strip in Las Vegas have been under water.

In Kentucky, powerful floodwaters swallowed towns that hug creeks and streams in Appalachian valleys and hollows, swamping houses and businesses, leaving vehicles in useless piles and crunching runaway equipment and debris against bridges. Mudslides on steep slopes left many people marooned and without power, making rescues more difficult.

Krystal Holbrook's family started moving possessions to higher ground long before dawn on Thursday, racing to save them from the rapidly rising floodwaters that were menacing south-eastern Kentucky.

Her family scurried in the dark to move vehicles, campers, trailers and equipment. But as the water kept rising on Thursday, killing at least eight people that day and then the death toll rising to 15 overnight into Friday, they began to worry that they might run out of higher ground.

"We felt we had most of it moved out of the way," Holbrook said. "But right now, we're still moving vehicles even to higher ground. Higher ground is getting a little bit difficult."

The same was true throughout the region, as another round of rainfall loomed in an area already hammered by days of torrential rainfall.

The storm sent water gushing from hillsides and surging out of stream beds in Appalachia, inundating homes, businesses and roads. Rescue crews used helicopters and boats to pick up people trapped by floodwaters. Parts of western Virginia and southern West Virginia were also hit by flooding.

Beshear asked for prayers as the region braced for more rain. "In a word, this event is devastating," he said.

In Whitesburg, Kentucky, floodwaters seeped into Appalshop, an arts and education center renowned for promoting and preserving the region's history and culture.

"We're not sure exactly the full damage because we haven't been able to safely go into the building or really get too close to it," said Meredith Scalos, its communications director. "We do know that some of our archival materials have flooded out of the building into Whitesburg streets."

Meanwhile, dangerous conditions and continued rainfall hampered rescue efforts, the governor said.

"We've got a lot of people that need help that we can't get to at the moment," he said. "We will."

Flash flooding and mudslides were reported across the mountainous region of eastern Kentucky, western Virginia and southern West Virginia, where thunderstorms dumped several inches of rain over the past few days, with additional flooding that is more extreme than usual still being possible.

Poweroutage.us reported more than 33,000 customers without electricity in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia, with the bulk of the outages in Kentucky.

Rescue crews worked feverishly to try to reach people trapped by the floodwaters.

"There are a lot of people in eastern Kentucky on top of roofs waiting to be rescued," Beshear said on Thursday.

The storms hit an Appalachian mountain region where towns and houses are often perched on steep hillsides or set deep in the hollows between them, where creeks and streams can rise rapidly.

Update July 30

The New York Times reports:

Search for Victims Continues in Kentucky After Floods Kill at Least 25

© Austin Anthony

Homes and vehicles flooded on Friday by overflow from heavy rains in Breathitt County, Ky.

The response to some of the worst flooding in Kentucky's history was entering a pivotal phase on Saturday morning, with the confirmed death toll at 25 and the search for victims poised to accelerate over a battered stretch of central Appalachia.

A cold front is expected to bring clearer weather to flood-stricken areas on Saturday, giving rescue personnel one less obstacle to contend with as they work to pluck more residents off rooftops. Nearly 300 people have been rescued in Kentucky so far, about 100 of them by aircraft, Gov. Andy Beshear told reporters on Friday.

But state officials expect the death toll to keep growing, possibly for weeks, as rescue efforts continue across rugged hills and valleys that remain hard to reach. And with rain in the forecast for Sunday, they feel urgency to make more progress before water levels have a chance to rise again.

"There's still a lot of people out there — still a lot of people unaccounted for," Mr. Beshear said on Friday, as President Biden approved a disaster declaration for the state. "We're going to do our best to find them all."

Plenty of challenges remain. One is that some Kentucky communities are either without electricity or cut off from cellphone service. According to poweroutage.us, a website that tracks power interruptions, more than 17,000 households across the state were without power as of 4 a.m. Saturday.

Further flooding is also possible. Some Kentucky creeks and rivers were still rising on Friday, and even as a flood warning in a pocket of eastern Kentucky with more than 46,000 residents expired at 10 p.m., a similar number of residents in that part of the state were under flood warnings or advisories through at least Saturday afternoon.

Update August 1

CNN reports:

Kentucky flooding death toll rises to 35 as governor says hundreds remain unaccounted for

The death toll in flood-stricken Kentucky has risen to 35, Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday afternoon, as rescue workers continue to comb the region for hundreds of missing people, unable to access areas left isolated after floodwater washed away bridges and inundated communities.

"More tough news," the governor said on Twitter. "We have confirmed more fatalities from the Eastern Kentucky floods. Our loss now stands at 35. Pray for these families and for those who are missing."

The death toll could still rise further, according to officials, with "hundreds of unaccounted for people" at a minimum, the governor said at a news conference earlier in the day in Frankfort.

"We just don't have a firm grasp on that. I wish we did -- there are a lot of reasons why it's nearly impossible," he said. "But I want to make sure we're not giving either false hope or faulty information."

The flooding last week swelled over roads, destroyed bridges and swept away entire homes, displacing thousands of Kentuckians, Beshear previously said. Vital electricity, water and roadway infrastructure was also knocked out. Some of it has yet to be restored, though cell service is returning in some of the state's hardest-hit areas, the governor said, which may help people connect with loved ones they've yet to contact.

"I've lived here in this town for 56 years, and I have never seen water of this nature," Tracy Neice, the mayor of Hindman, Kentucky, told CNN, saying his town's main street looked like a stretch of river where one might go whitewater rafting. "It was just devastating to all of our businesses, all of our offices."

Related: Severe flash floods in Missouri after record rainfall of 7 inches in just 5 hours