At least 16 die in ‘epic’ Kentucky floods, including 6 children

The death toll in eastern Kentucky rose to at least 16 on Friday as flooding unleashed “epic” torrential rainfall swept through homes, washed out roads and pushed rivers over their banks, state authorities said, warning that more fatalities were expected.
Police and National Guard troops, including personnel from neighbouring states, used helicopters and boats to rescue dozens of people from homes and vehicles in Kentucky’s Appalachian coal-mining region. Video from local media showed floodwaters reaching the roofs of houses and turning roads into rivers.
“This isn’t over. While we’re doing search and rescue, there are still real dangers out there,” Governor Andy Beshear told a morning news conference.
After a helicopter flyover of the hardest-hit areas with Deanne Criswell, head of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, Beshear said he was stunned the scope of the flooding.
Most of Jackson, a town of 2,200 people about 160 km southeast of Frankfort, the state capital, was submerged, he said.
“Hundreds of homes, their ballfields, their parks, businesses, under more water than I think any of us have ever seen in that area,” he told reporters. “Just devastating.”

“We had to swim out and it was over my head. It was scary.” The death toll in the devastating flash floods that hit Kentucky this week has risen to 16 and is expected to increase as rescue efforts continue. Follow live updates. https://t.co/FclssI11Xk pic.twitter.com/JzXMXn4nFr
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 29, 2022
The floods marked the second major national disaster to strike Kentucky in seven months, following a swarm of tornadoes that claimed nearly 80 lives in the western part of the state in December.
Beshear said the number of confirmed flood-related fatalities on Friday rose to 16 from 15, including at least six children, and that the death toll would almost certainly climb as floodwaters recede and search teams find more bodies.
“There’s still a lot of people unaccounted for,” he said, declining to quantify the number missing. “We may be updating the count of how many we lost for the next several weeks.”
The floods resulted from downpours of 13 to 25 cm of rain that fell over the region in 24 hours, a deluge that may prove unprecedented in the region’s record books, said William Haneberg, an environmental sciences professor and director of the Kentucky Geological Survey.
“It’s a truly epic event,” Haneberg said.
Homes and structures are flooded near Quicksand, Kentucky, July 28, 2022. (AP, File)
The disaster came two weeks after rain-triggered flash floods inundated the riverfront Appalachian community of Whitewood in southwestern Virginia near the Kentucky border.
The region’s steep hillsides and narrow valleys make it prone to flooding, but the increasing frequency and severity of rain-caused floods in the Appalachian region are symptomatic of human-induced climate change, Haneberg said.
Flood events “are going to be more extreme and frequent, but it’s hard to predict how extreme and how frequent they will be in the future,” he said in an interview.
‘Everything is gone’
In Garrett, Kentucky, a coal-mining town about 200 km east of Lexington, brown floodwaters swirled through a commercial street and backed up against storefronts, video clips showed. Rescue boats carried people wearing life jackets along the submerged street, past the tops of vehicles poking through the high water.

VIDEO: Homes, roads and cars are seen submerged under flood waters from the North Fork of the Kentucky River, after torrential rains caused massive flooding in eastern Kentucky, US pic.twitter.com/Knmqj6jYcp
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) July 29, 2022
“Everything is gone,” Garrett resident Rachel Patton told WCHS-TV as she cried. “We had to swim out and it was cold. It was over my head. It was scary.”
At least 300 people in Kentucky have been reported rescued emergency crews, Beshear said. That number will likely climb, he said, considering that more than 100 people alone have been saved in National Guard airlifts.
Authorities went door-to-door on Thursday in a low-lying area of Jackson, evacuating people after inspectors noticed a discharge seeping from the near Panbowl Lake Dam.
“Late last night and early this morning, we thought that a real breach was imminent,” Beshear said, adding that officials were a bit more optimic Friday morning.
On Friday afternoon, some 22,000 homes and businesses in Kentucky and 2,200 in West Virginia were without power, according to Poweroutage.us. Widespread outages to natural gas service, water treatment and communication networks were also reported, the governor said.
Evelyn Smith gathers clothing at the Knott County Sportsplex in Leburn, Kentucky, July 29, 2022. Smith lost everything as fast-rising floodwaters forced her from her home, and the sportsplex is being used as an evacuation center. (AP)
Flood warnings and watches remained in effect throughout the day for the eastern half of Kentucky, as well as northeastern Tennessee and western West Virginia, where more rainfall was expected to swell waterways already well above flood stage, the National Weather Service said.
The North Fork Kentucky River at Jackson crested more than 4 meters above flood stage, a record, early Friday, according to government monitors.
As much as 30 cm of rain has fallen in parts of the region over the last week, according to the weather service.
President Joe Biden declared a major disaster in Kentucky on Friday, allowing federal funding to be allocated to the state.
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice declared a state of emergency on Thursday for six counties in his state, where heavy rains caused flooding that disrupted drinking water systems and blocked roads.