“There are going to be several families that we’ve lost,” Beshear told Brianna Keilar on CNN’s “New Day.” “Kids who won’t have the opportunity to grow up and experience as much as we have.”
“This is so deadly, and it hit so hard, and it hit in the middle of the night,” the governor said, adding that while eastern Kentucky often floods, “we’ve never seen something like this”.
Rescuers are working around the clock to reach areas hard to reach due to flooding that swept through the area after heavy rains from Wednesday night into Thursday.
Beshear warned Thursday that the destruction is far from over as more rain is expected on Friday. Eastern Kentucky has a mild to moderate risk of flash flooding through Friday evening, as an additional 1 to 3 inches is possible throughout the day, according to the Weather Prediction Center.
An elderly man and woman died after being swept from their homes in the Oneida community near Manchester, Kentucky, according to Clay County Coroner Jarrod Becknell. The man was 76 and the woman in her late 60s or early 70s, said Assistant Coroner Joe Crockett.
It’s unclear whether the two deaths are included in the statewide toll Beshear announced.
Late Thursday, Kentucky officials recommended that people evacuate homes and businesses in the Panbowl Lake floodplain in Jackson, citing rising Kentucky River water levels and a “muddy discharge” seen in near the dam of the lake. A portion of Kentucky Route 15 was also closed Thursday night.
Parts of West Virginia and West Virginia also experienced severe flooding on Thursday and are expected to receive more rain on Friday. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued a statewide emergency declaration and West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency for Fayette, Greenbrier, Logan, McDowell counties, Mingo and Wyoming, according to press releases from the governors’ offices.
Much of West Virginia has a moderate risk of flash flooding Friday, according to the Weather Prediction Center. The Southwest Virginia region is also at risk of flooding Friday with one to two inches of rain possible, and potentially more in some local areas, according to the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, Virginia.
At a White House briefing Thursday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will travel to Kentucky on Friday to survey the damage and report to President Joe Biden.
FEMA has also dispatched rescue personnel and an incident management assistance team to assist in the state’s rescue efforts, he said.
Beshear sent a direct request to Biden for federal aid for eastern Kentucky, the governor said in a tweet.
Rescues complicated by widespread water, power cuts
As flood waters rose to dangerous levels, some Kentuckians were quickly trapped and unable to escape safely. Up to 30 people were airlifted by the National Guard on Thursday, Beshear said.
In Floyd County, approximately 80 people have been rescued since heavy rains began in the area on Tuesday, County Judge Executive Robbie Williams told CNN.
“I’ve never seen that much water before,” Williams said. “I mean it’s absolutely poured out and we’ve got, you know, some small towns that are completely under water.”
Widespread water and power outages in the region are hampering recovery efforts, Beshear said Thursday. He noted that flooding is making it difficult for utility workers to access areas needed to restore power.
More than 23,000 customers were without power statewide as of early Friday, according to reports PowerOutage.us.
The state also has a limited number of helicopters capable of lifting people into the air, the governor said. In an effort to aid the state’s recovery efforts, both West Virginia and Tennessee sent helicopters with lift capabilities to Kentucky.
West Virginia has also deployed National Guard troops to assist its neighboring state, Gov. Justice announced.
Communities also jumped into action to help their neighbors, including residents in the city of Whitesburg.
“We took kayaks, jet skis, boats, chainsaws and axes to every place we could,” resident Zach Caudill told CNN. Caudill’s home only experienced a few inches of flooding, but he said several of his neighbors lost their homes entirely.
Caudill took bandages, gauze, medicine, menstrual supplies, food, water and blankets from her home to take to others, she said.
“Everybody was there trying to lend a hand and help. That’s how close-knit our community is,” Caudill said. “When one of us hurts, we all hurt.”
Kentucky State Police are asking residents in at least eight counties to call them if they have missing family members and provide information about their loved ones. Counties include Wolfe, Owsley, Breathitt, Knott, Leslie, Letcher, Pike and Perry.
The climate crisis causes more intense floods
Kentucky was one of several states, including Missouri and Arizona, to experience severe flooding Thursday amid increasingly extreme weather events that are being amplified by the climate crisis. In St. Louis, record-breaking rainfall earlier in the week triggered dangerous flash flooding that has continued for days and left at least one person dead.
As global temperatures rise, the atmosphere is able to hold more and more water, making water vapor more abundant to fall as rain.
Rainfall over land has become more intense since the 1980s, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The authors of the report say that human influence is the main driver.
Human-caused fossil fuel emissions have warmed the planet by a little more than 1 degree Celsius, on average, with more intense warming in land areas. Scientists are increasingly confident of the role of the climate crisis in extreme weather, and have warned that these events will become more intense and dangerous with every fraction of a degree of warming.
CNN’s Amy Simonson, Angela Fritz, Caitlin Kaiser, Sara Smart, Sharif Paget, Amanda Musa, Claudia Dominguez, Michelle Watson, Caitlyn Kaiser and Jason Hanna contributed to this report.
