Update: Gov. Andy Beshear announced an additional two deaths in a 10 a.m. briefing on Monday, bringing the total to 11 deaths.
Kentucky is in the midst of a federally-declared emergency after flooding inundated all 120 counties over the weekend. At least nine people died, and tens of thousands lost power, water and sewer services.
Western and south central Kentucky received the heaviest rains, as much as 7 inches in some areas. The deluge closed roads, swept away vehicles killing a mother and her child, downed trees and swept through towns across the state.
Most of Kentucky’s rivers are seeing some kind of flooding, with major flooding along the Kentucky, Green and Rolling Fork rivers, according to the National Weather Service.
Among the steep slopes of the Appalachians, flash flooding overwhelmed the banks of creeks and rivers spilling into homes and downtowns in places including Hazard, Fleming-Neon and Pikeville. State police evacuated 100 patients from a nursing home in Elkhorn City.
Fleming-Neon, KY is flooding once again. Got this today from a source in the downtown area which was gutted in 2022.
— Justin Hicks (@justinhicks.lpm.org) 2025-02-15T23:34:16.645Z
Gov. Andy Beshear said during a Sunday press conference that the state is still in the search and rescue phase of the disaster and he expects the number of people killed to grow in the coming days.
“You look at the number of people we’ve already lost and damage, this is one of the most serious weather events we've dealt with in at least a decade,” Beshear said. “We've certainly had our share and this is another significant one.”
Emergency shelters are open across eastern Kentucky, as well as state parks where more than a hundred people have already found refuge. Local swiftwater teams got in place ahead of the flooding and as a result, achieved more than a thousand water rescues in the first 24 hours, many of which were in eastern Kentucky.
Across most of the commonwealth, first responders spent the weekend on the job, preparing for and reacting to widespread flooding. Sunday afternoon in Garrard County, Deputy Emergency Management Director David East said he was tired, but the extra hours are part of the job.
“We were prepared. We knew it was coming. So, you know, it's kind of the — that's what we do,” East said. “We're there during emergencies.”
A water rescue in eastern Kentucky
Gigi Neace, her husband, and their five dogs live in the small town of Busy, Kentucky outside of Hazard. They recently finished building their house along with a dog grooming business in the basement. On Saturday, Neace kept a close eye on the creek outside her home. Suddenly, it changed.
“In about 30 minutes, I turned around and it was coming up on the steps. I kept hearing things banging into the basement,” she said. “It was terrifying.”
Neace said the crashing sound was her cue to abandon the house and their possessions. They called 911 and were rescued by boat. The next morning, Neace’s neighbor sent a photo of her home: the roof was an island in a muddy sea.
“We lost our home. Our home was completely submerged,” Neace said. “We got out with our clothes, well, a few clothes that we were able to grab real quick while they rescued us.”
They specifically built this house high off the ground to be flood resilient. That’s because they lost their last one in a mudslide about two years ago.
“We thought we were safe and it still took the house again,” Neace said. “It’s kind of hard to start rebuilding after two and three times.”
In nearby Hazard, downtown coordinator Bailey Richards has started an online form for people to volunteer mucking out downtown businesses that will likely be inundated with fetid mud.
Richards says, thanks to warnings from meteorologists and officials, most people were aware a storm was coming. Although many folks were prepared for it to impact the same neighborhoods as the 2022 floods. Anecdotally, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
“It's all just so different,” Richards said. “I mean, it's obviously hitting the same region, but it's hitting completely different creeks. It's getting completely different rivers, different neighborhoods. So it makes it really hard to prepare for these things.”
Deaths in central Kentucky
Three Hart County residents are among confirmed deaths from the weekend flooding in Kentucky.
A mother and her 7-year-old child died in the central Kentucky town of Bonnieville on Saturday night when their vehicle was swept away in flash flooding. Another Hart County man died during a car accident in a flooded area.
On Sunday, Beshear, emergency officials and meteorologists were among those warning residents to avoid driving through flooded roadways.
Meteorologists say this event was unique in that every county in Kentucky saw flooding. South central and western parts of the state received a widespread 5 to 6 inches of rain, reaching as high as 7 inches in isolated areas.
“We had all the rain, then right in the middle of it, we had a tornado warning. Just crazy, crazy weather,” Ricky King, Muhlenberg County emergency director said.
King said they got about 7 inches of rain in one day followed by 2 inches of snow the very next morning, but overall the impact doesn’t seem as dire as it is in the mountains, where flash flooding is more common.
“Yeah, we're not near like Hazard,” King said. “Matter of fact, I've just talked to some folks from Hazard, and, you know, they've got some which they're in a kind of little bit different situation than we are.”
Back in downtown Hazard, Bailey Richards says there’s a grim silver lining: people in her area know the steps to respond to a disaster. It’s a tired, well-rehearsed dance.
“As soon as it started happening, I was like, ‘Okay, well, I know what I got to do. We got to organize this and this,’” she said. “Last time we were all just kind of staring there, shell shocked, like, what do we do? I think now we know.”
The full extent of the destruction likely won’t be known for another few days when waters have a chance to recede – just in time for a snow storm to hit in the middle of the week.
This story was updated to include details about additional deaths.
This story was produced by Kentucky Public Radio, a collaboration between WEKU in Richmond, WKMS in Murray, WKYU in Bowling Green and LPM in Louisville.
WEKU Reporter John McGary and WKYU staff contributed to this reporting.
