‘Gone in one night.’ At trailer park near Harlan, these residents lost everything in flood.
Derick Jackson, of Harlan County, woke up to a car horn outside his trailer window.
Jackson’s landlord was driving through the park, honking and waking up residents to the rising water that was already ankle-deep by the time Jackson walked outside.
Within just a couple hours, it would be halfway up his trailer windows.
Jackson, 23, saw the ankle-deep water and ran back inside. He told his wife, who is 21, “Don’t freak out, but we gotta get out of here right now, we got to get the kids out.”
He loaded the two young children in a van and got them to safety. When he returned to the trailer, though, the water was rising fast.
Within an hour, it had crested the stairs that led to his front door, and began to flow inside. Jackson grabbed some clothes and sentimental items. On his last trip, the water outside was chest-high.
Practically everything that he left was destroyed: children’s toys; furniture; appliances; electronics.
“I lost everything,” he said. “Everything it took us years to build is gone in one night, one day.”
The recent flooding that destroying Jackson’s property damaged at least 217 homes across southeastern Kentucky, according to state officials. One man, in Whitley County, drowned on his way to work, and the water swept away two mobile homes in Harlan County.
Red Cross volunteers have tallied 80 to 90 homes that were severely damaged a four-county region that includes Harlan, Bell, Whitley and Knox counties.
While the floodwaters have largely receded across the region, officials worry that heavy rain could cause additional damage early next week.
Michael Dossett, director of Kentucky Emergency Management, said the region will be “in the bullseye for the next two to three weeks.”
Leslie Bledsoe, president of the non-profit With Love From Harlan, said the trailer park at Tremont, where Jackson lives, was hit particularly hard.
Bledsoe has been working with several churches, including Heritage Baptist in Lexington, to gather cleaning supplies and other essentials for impacted residents.
Heritage Baptist will be collecting donations from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday and load a truck full of supplies for delivery to Harlan County.
Bledsoe said the flood, coupled with the continued impact from the bankruptcy of Blackjewel, LLC., a major coal producer in the county, has left many residents “worn down.”
“There were so many affected by (the bankruptcy). Either you know somebody who was affected or you were directly,” she said. “It’s just been a rough year.”
Jackson said he plans to move his family to somewhere outside of the floodplain in hopes of keeping his children safe from future flood events.
But they’ll have to start over.
“We just got married about two years ago, had our first kid, then had our second. Everything was perfect, everything was great,” he said. “I never thought this would happen, it’s definitely a life-changing event.”
Misty Smith, Jackson’s sister-in-law who lives in a house at the trailer park, said the children were the most severely impacted.
“When they seen that water come past the first step, they panicked,” Smith said.
Officials said they were concerned about additional flooding Wednesday and Thursday, but despite heavy rain in some places Wednesday night, officials said there was no significant damage.
Smith didn’t see any additional flooding at Tremont Wednesday or Thursday, but said her children are still worried every time it rains.
“When it starts raining, ‘Mommy, it’s not gonna flood, is it?’” Smith said. “It’s hard on them.”
Another resident, Anthony Seals, said he also lost practically everything, including his grandmother’s 40-year-old stereo system that, aside from one of Seals’ rock-’n-roll cassettes, “played nothing but gospel music.”
“There wasn’t much I could save,” he said.
Amanda Shotton, a manager with the Red Cross, encouraged people impacted by flooding to call the regional Red Cross hotline at (859) 428-8345.
This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 12:06 PM.