LEXINGTON, Ky. — President Joe Biden pledged during a trip to Kentucky that the federal government would be in the state for the long haul to help people in damaged communities recover from historic floods.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited Eastern Kentucky Monday and viewed damage from the July 28 floods.
“I promise we’re not leaving,” Biden said during a news conference in Breathitt County Monday. “The federal government and all its resources, we are not leaving.”
The Bidens flew into Lexington Monday morning aboard Air Force One and then took a helicopter to Eastern Kentucky. They were accompanied by Gov. Andy Beshear and his wife, Britainy, as they met with flood victims. U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell were also on the trip.
Criswell said more than 700 people from FEMA are on the ground. More than 134,000 meals have been distributed. So far, 800 people in the 12 counties covered by the disaster declaration have received more than $13 million in total aid.
Biden said the damage that Kentucky sustained was heartbreaking.
“You think to yourself, ‘what in God’s name happened?’” Biden said.
Beshear said during the news conference in Breathitt County that the state was going to add one death to the previous death toll of 37 after Aaron “Mick” Crawford, a high school football player in Knott County, fell ill while trying to help with cleanup and died. Beshear also said two people are still missing.
“This is the most devastating and deadly flooding event, certainly, in my lifetime,” Beshear said.
Rogers, a Republican who represents the flooded region, thanked Biden for a quick disaster declaration that allowed resources to start getting to people. Rogers complimented the resilience of Eastern Kentucky residents.
“The spirit of the people of Eastern Kentucky shines through,” Rogers said.
In addition to visiting Breathitt County, Biden flew over flooded areas to observe the damage from a helicopter.
Floyd County Judge-Executive Robbie Williams said Biden’s trip will help keep a focus on the devastated region as it faces hundreds of millions in costs to recover.
“To me the benefit is the attention, the national attention,” said Williams, an independent. “He keeps it on the front page of the paper a few more days.”
That could help in getting support, he said.
Biden’s second trip to survey disaster damage in Kentucky
It was Biden’s second trip in eight months to Kentucky to see devastating damage from a natural disaster. The president visited Western Kentucky last December a few days after tornadoes decimated several cities and killed 80 people.
Biden toured Mayfield and Dawson Springs in December, talked with survivors, prayed with the mayor of Mayfield and others and pledged that the federal government would support the recovery over the long haul.
The worst of the flooding in Eastern Kentucky happened early July 28, when torrential rainfall caused creeks and rivers to surge out of their banks, carrying away homes, inundating businesses, schools and churches, buckling roads, knocking down power lines and washing out bridges and waterlines.
On the North Fork of the Kentucky River at Whitesburg, the water rose more than 6 feet higher than a record that had stood for 65 years.
State and local officials haven’t yet come up with an estimate on the amount of damage, but Williams said cleanup and rebuilding will likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Williams said Floyd County alone had 300 homes and businesses flooded.
“We’ve never had numbers like that,” he said, but pointed out the brunt of the storm was even greater in other counties.
Members of Kentucky’s congressional delegation in recent days have mentioned the need for sustained spending to help the region recover.
Rogers, the congressman who represents the flooded area, said on Aug. 4 after seeing the damage from a helicopter that the flash flooding “was a natural disaster of epic proportions that we haven’t met in our lifetime.”
“The work to rebuild must be well funded, well orchestrated and long-lasting,” Rogers said.
In a speech Saturday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the response to the disaster by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal agencies had been extraordinary, and that continued federal help will be a key to the recovery.
“Once rebuilding begins, their role will only grow,” he said of FEMA.
The region decimated by the flooding faced daunting economic challenges even before the turmoil of muddy water.
Five of the first seven counties where Biden approved a disaster declaration allowing individual assistance to flood victims are among the 100 poorest in the nation, based on a measure by the Appalachian Regional Commission that considers poverty and unemployment rates and per capita market income.
In Knott County, for instance, which saw the most deaths in the flood, per capita market income was $15,320 in 2020, compared to $33,388 for Kentucky and $46,638 nationally, according to the ARC.
Per capita market income is a measure of total personal income in a county but it doesn’t count what are called transfer payments such as retirement and disability benefits.
On another measure, the percentage of people living in poverty, the rate in all the counties hit hardest by the flood topped 20% between 2016 and 2020 — compared to 12.8% nationally. The rate was over 30% in some areas, according to ARC.
The counties have also lost thousands of jobs in the coal industry, which was once the mainstay of the Eastern Kentucky economy but began a steep slide a decade ago.
There has been some job growth over the last 18 months driven in part by high prices for natural gas, which competes with coal, but there are still far fewer people mining coal than in recent years.
Coal employment averaged 2,797 in Eastern Kentucky in the first three months of this year, compared with 13,112 in 2012, according to the state Energy and Environment Cabinet.
Perry County, where eight people died in the flood, had 559 people mining coal or working at preparation plants in the first three months of this year. That was up significantly over the same period in 2021, but a decade earlier it had more than 1,500 coal jobs.
The loss in coal production means local governments receive far less money than they once did from a tax on mined coal, and counties with an occupational tax receive less revenue because fewer people are working.
A number of counties in the region have also been losing population, in part because of people moving away to find work, which also contributes to them having more deaths than births.
Knott County lost 12.8% of its population between 2010 and 2020. There were 1,740 more people who moved out than in, and 351 more deaths than births, according to the Kentucky State Data Center at the University of Louisville.
In neighboring Letcher County, the population loss was 12.1%, with negative net migration of 2,375 people and 591 more deaths than births.
Still, officials have lauded the strength of the people in the region and their work to support each other in a difficult time.
“There’s people that lost everything they’ve got but they’re still out there helping,” said Letcher County Judge-Executive Terry Adams.
Williams, the Floyd County judge-executive, said at one point when he was helping deliver supplies to flood victims, a man whose house had flooded told him to take the items to someone who needed them more.
“They’re resilient,” Williams said of people in Eastern Kentucky. “They’re gonna do what they need to do.”
‘We’re survivors’
Barbara Gross held up her cellphone as President Biden’s motorcade passed by on the road to Marie Roberts Elementary School on Monday.
Gross had tried to walk to the elementary school to see the president but was turned away by Kentucky State Police. Only flood survivors were allowed in, she was told.
“We’re survivors,” Gross said.
Gross and others were mucking and cleaning out the Crucial Memorial Baptist Church on the banks of Lost Creek. The basement has flooded in the past.
“It’s never been on the second floor,” Gross said.
Gross lives not far from the church and has taken on cleaning out the church as a project. Her home, on a hill across the road from Lost Creek, was not damaged by the floods. But she has friends who have lost everything. A couple she knows lost their home and everything in it, she said. The husband’s place of employment has also been wiped out. They applied for FEMA aid.
“They were denied because they made more than $50,000,” Gross said.
Their home may have been paid off at the time it was swept away, she said.
“What are they supposed to do?”
The tiny 30-congregation church doesn’t have flood insurance. Most people don’t, she said.
“Who can afford $10,000 a year?” she said. There are many areas of Eastern Kentucky that never flood and were completely covered in water during this round of flooding, she said.
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(Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Chris Leach contributed to this report.)
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