‘It’s exhausting.’ A weary Eastern Kentucky faces another round of devastating floods
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Eastern KY suffers massive flooding
Raging flood waters over the weekend, and severe cold weather, have claimed the lives of 14 people across Kentucky.
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On Saturday night, as flood waters from the Kentucky River rose and spilled into Hazard’s downtown for the second time is less than three years, Mandi Fugate Sheffel texted a friend: “I don’t want to do this again.”
“This,” of course, was everything she remembered from the floods of 2022: The mourning of people first, then homes, then businesses, the constant cleanup of rancid mud, the determination to come back.
“It’s just exhausting,” said Sheffel.
She was trapped at home again because her road was flooded, but her house was OK, and so was her business, the Read Spotted Newt bookstore in downtown Hazard.
“It’s frustrating and disheartening, and yet it seems like nobody’s missing a beat ... everyone is coming with the same resiliency they had in 2022,” she said. “We know from experience how long it will take for there to be any kind of response from a federal level.”
It’s particularly disheartening, because Hazard’s downtown has been making a comeback with shops and restaurants. As of Sunday, as many as 40 of them had been flooded.
“It’s a real gut punch,” Sheffel said.
Experience creates expertise, and by now nearly everyone in Eastern Kentucky is a reluctant expert in all things flooding. Although not as deadly as 2022, the body count is up to 11.
Kristin Collins, the executive director of the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, a donation clearing house yet again for flood victims, said that while she’s worried about donor fatigue, the silver lining is that the partnerships across the region from 2022 are still in place.
“We already have the relationships,” she said.
From what she has seen, it appears the flooding was more widespread but more predictable, unlike in 2022 when a foot of rain in one night turned the smallest streams into death channels.
This time there were actual forecasts, so people had time to get to higher ground, plus it happened during the day. People could see the rising water, as opposed to being swept away in the dark.
“There are some bright spots,” she said.
One of those is the highland home building that is underway in pockets across Eastern Kentucky. New housing developments, most of them on old mine sites, have allowed more people to live outside of flood plains.
But in Eastern Kentucky, most lowland residents are still at risk.
In 2022, the tiny town of Neon in Letcher County was destroyed. A year later, I interviewed Tom King, who operated an auto collision business on the banks of a tiny creek that swelled to 11 feet high inside his garage. It had flooded five times since 2016. This time around was the sixth, according to photos. He did not answer his phone on Sunday.
Gwen Johnson operates the Hemphill Community Center up above Neon. She said her phone would not stop ringing all day Saturday.
“I think a lot of what we saw was mass hysteria from post-traumatic stress,” she said. “The flooding does not look as bad as in 2022. But we were cut off from getting to the grocery yesterday, which is scary when you have a scarcity mentality anyway.”
People in Neon are still recovering from losing their entire Main Street. It was up and running, but it didn’t take that much water to bring things to a halt.
Sheffel is also worried about national reports of big cuts to the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“I’ve been relying on NOAA to give me information,” she said. “Knowing when the river is going to crest, that’s NOAA data. They are critical to us.”
But the bigger question, as always, is how many 100-year floods can a person take every two or three years?
“I am genuinely concerned for the region,” Sheffel said. “I feel like I’m here and rooted and will continue to be here, but how many people get to a point where they just can’t do it anymore? I don’t know that answer.
“I’m just exhausted by it, but I know we’ll pick it up and do it again.”
This story was originally published February 16, 2025 at 4:17 PM.
