He is also preparing 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 the state’s history, the mayor of a small town in the eastern part of the state came to help with the cleanup. That town, Hindman, was among the hardest hit by this week’s flooding. So Bremen’s mayor immediately began planning trips across the state with trucks full of supplies — even as his own community continued to rebuild. “I said, ‘You were here in December and you helped us,’” Bremen Mayor Allen Miller told the Hindman mayor in a phone call. “Now it’s time to return the favor.” Officials reacted to such efforts as evidence of a kind of generosity rooted in Kentucky culture, a spirit forged over generations of hardship in which communities had to rely on each other to get by. But this round of support is also a stark reminder of the turmoil caused by the natural disaster that has gripped the state in recent months and will make recovery from the latest disaster even more difficult. Officials said Saturday that at least 25 people had died in the floods, but it could take weeks to determine the full extent of the human toll and natural damage. “I wish I could tell you why we keep getting hit here in Kentucky,” Gov. Andy Beshear said during a briefing in which he informed residents of the rising death toll and showed a sense of anguish and exhaustion felt by many in the state . after repeated disasters, including a powerful ice storm last year that knocked out power to 150,000 people in eastern Kentucky, a flash flood last July that left many stranded in their homes and December’s rare tornadoes that blazed a nearly 200-mile path of destruction and killed 80 people. “I wish I could tell you why areas where people may not have much keep getting hit and losing everything,” the governor continued. “I can’t tell you why, but I know what we’re doing in response to it. And the answer is everything we can.” These disasters – especially floods and tornadoes – would be shocking setbacks for any community. But here, they have been particularly devastating, hitting rural areas already deeply vulnerable after decades of decline. “These places weren’t thriving before,” said Jason Bailey, executive director of the Kentucky Economic Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, noting the erosion of the coal industry and the loss of manufacturing jobs. “It’s a long way to even get back to where they were.” For communities inundated by severe flooding, that road has only just begun. The worst damage has been concentrated in about a half-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, while thousands remain without electricity. Houses were pulled from their foundations. Bridges have washed away, leaving some remote communities inaccessible. “I’ve seen ditches form where there weren’t ditches because of rushing water,” said Dan Mosley, judge-executive for Harlan County. His community experienced only minor flooding, he said, so in recent days, he has been accompanying workers from the county Department of Transportation in dump trucks equipped with snow plows to clear roads blocked by dirt and debris in neighboring communities. The worst disaster he saw was in Knott and Letcher Counties “The sheer devastating loss is hard to put into words,” he said. “I’ve just never seen anything like it in my career or even in my life.” In Breathitt County, at least four deaths were confirmed, about a dozen people were missing and much of the county remained under water. Many homes in the sparsely populated county were still inaccessible. The community was already struggling to find its footing after the latest flood. “We had another flood, a record flood, not 12 months ago, and a lot of families were just starting to get their lives back on track,” said Hargis Epperson, the county coroner. “Now it’s happened again, worse this time. Everyone has lost everything, twice.” In Hazard, a town of just over 5,200 in Perry County, 24 adults, five children and four dogs had taken refuge at First Presbyterian Church — a number that was almost certain to rise in the coming days. Their homes were flooded or wiped out by a mudslide. Some of them arrived wet and caked in mud, said Tracy Counts, a Red Cross worker at the church. All she had to offer them were baby wipes. there was no running water. “It makes it a harder puzzle to solve, but we adapt and make it happen,” Ms. Coates said. “It’s just hard to ask for help when we’re all in the same boat.” Melissa Hensley Powell, 48, was taken to the church after being rescued from her home in Hardshell, an unincorporated area of Breathitt County. She and her boyfriend had dragged her brother, who is paralyzed, out of their house and then put a mattress on him to lie on. They kept him dry by holding garbage bags and umbrellas over him. Two days after her rescue, while having a lunch of Little Caesars pizza and bottled water, she said the gravity of what she had endured was soaking in. “It’s starting to happen,” he said. “We’re still on that adrenaline rush.” At the church, a colleague has rented portable toilets. People have dropped off water, blankets and dog food, with the donated items filling some of the pews. “I know people have this image of Eastern Kentucky,” Ms. Kotz said, acknowledging the painful perception among outsiders of the area as poor and backward. “But we are the first to be reinforced. We are the first to ask, ‘How can we help?’” But now, an onslaught of disasters was testing that spirit of support in a profound way. It’s difficult to link a single weather event to climate change, but floods and tornadoes have highlighted the vulnerabilities facing Kentucky. For some, it has also highlighted failures of preparation, as experts warn of heavier rainfall, floods becoming smaller in area but stronger in size and weather patterns in general becoming more erratic. “Let us know that this is a new normal of incredibly devastating events that are going to hit our most vulnerable communities,” said Alex Gibson, executive director of Appalshop, the arts and education center in Whitesburg, Ky., comparing the litany of disasters from floods in eastern Kentucky with the devastation facing poor island nations around the world in the age of climate change. In the vast swath of the state now dealing with the effects of flooding and tornadoes, Mr. Bailey said, infrastructure was already inadequate and communities impoverished. “We have people living on the edge,” he said. “So much of the wealth has been extracted,” he said. “In a topography that has been literally stripped of trees and mountainsides, flooding in particular becomes more likely, more dangerous, more dangerous — that’s what we’re seeing.” And as much as communities want to rely on each other to recover from disaster, it would be difficult to raise the necessary resources on their own. “The pressure was enormous,” said Judge Mosley, who is also an officer in the Kentucky Association of Counties, of the widespread fallout from major disasters. Without outside support, “this could not survive,” he said. “Federal government resources and our faith in God is the only thing that will get us through this.” Shawn Hubler contributed reporting.
