How Appalachian Towns Learn to Help Each Other After Flood »Yale Climate Connection

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Cara Ellis started working as rivers and streams jumped across the banks of eastern Kentucky and flooded the wider area for the second time in years.

She has hardly relaxed since mid-February. Ellis spent countless hours evacuating her hometown of Pikeville and providing supplies to those who lost their homes. “I've been here and there are counties everywhere,” she said. “It's overwhelming. There's a lot of destruction.”

Ellis talks in a brief chaos. On the weekend of February 15, her home was spared when the storm was brought to the centre of Appalachia. The water fell so quickly that the Levisa fork on the Greater Sandy River quickly flooded the house and part of the downtown. The torrent only prompted more than 100 rescues in Pike County and left several communities and rural communities without running water. Record winter floods killed 21 people worldwide and caused 21 people in West Virginia, not the first time Ellis has seen a disaster attack, and she fears it won't be the last.

More than eight inches of rain flooded Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee, and had soaked the ground. Less than three years after flooding across eastern Kentucky, more than 40 people were flooded and hundreds of millions of dollars were caused in 13 counties. Hurricane Helen caused similar flooding six months ago with North Carolina, Virginia and western eastern Tennessee. As the world warms, extreme weather fuels will only become more common.

“These unprecedented storms really represent our new reality,” said Nicolas Pierre Zegre, a forest hydrologist at West Virginia University. “Recognizing that things have been changing, opening doors in other conversations, such as why things change?”

The severity and frequency of these floods accelerated. Climate change brings increasingly extreme precipitation, which can cause hillsides to soak in hillsides and narrow valleys. All parts of Appalachia are vulnerable, with the greatest risk being rural communities that can quickly find themselves isolated by landslides, fallen trees and flooded roads.

Even if it helps, it may not be any soon. This prompted people to step in, and this informal reaction became increasingly organized in every crisis. “We all need to be our own number one responders because these things are really fast,” Zegre said.

Lifelong Willa Johnson in eastern Kentucky lives in McRoberts when the 2022 floods overturned her life. She fled the rising water and returned a few days later, finding her home with her church, her son's school and the arts and cultural center where she worked was destroyed. Now, this one. This time she was not flooded, but saw her neighbor suffer again. “The last few years have been cruel,” she said. “It has changed the landscape, changed people.”

Nevertheless, she and others throughout the region believe their experiences prepare them to face future disasters, and when other rural communities experience the same experiences, understand what they face and how best to help them. Johnson said when Helen hit North Carolina, “it’s very heavy for us.”

She organized supply drivers for Helen survivors and sought donations outside Walmart, where those suffering from the 2022 flooding offer their possibilities. “A person who lost the entire home would give us $10 from their pockets and say, 'We know what this is like.' Volunteers packed medical supplies, water and propane heaters for the car and drove to a remote corner of western North Carolina. They called the initiative our turn, like our turn to help.

This week, it’s North Carolina’s turn to help. Volunteers in the nonprofit Asheville drove a truck full of supplies to Perry County. The Asheville City Fire Department dispatched a Swift water rescue team to help pull survivors out of Hazard's house.

“It feels like we're just constantly going from disaster to disaster, and people don't have time to get tired,” Johnson said, her voice full of emotion. “But it’s also really beautiful because these groups we are connecting with say, ‘What do you need? How do we give this to you? Now reaching out and saying, ‘This is what we have. This is something we can send. It is this system of mutual assistance that only crosses the state line and people reach out to each other. ”

Chelsea White-Hoglen, a community organizer in Haywood County, North Carolina, has been coordinating runs to eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. She said people through Appalachia are increasingly aware of the challenges of rural disaster mitigation, as well as the difficulties faced by most elderly people, disabled people or communities living in poverty, and the tight urban budgets that struggle to deal with aging infrastructure. State and federal officials do what they can, but they often lack first-hand knowledge of the community’s needs. “When we face this kind of disaster, these networks and relationships between people will be the strongest and most reliable,” White-Hoglen said.

These networks are becoming increasingly powerful as volunteers like Johnson find better and more effective ways to bring together those in need and those who can provide disasters. They have started using Google Sheets to blend donors and recipients. They organized donation locations and delivery caravans. They designated community resource hubs, such as churches and warehouses, where people can seek help. They create and manage schedules so that people don’t burn. These volunteer-oriented efforts start working with local officials to identify needs and meet them as they are in the best position to understand.

“I'm glad we're learning,” Johnson said.

Cara Ellis said the flood helped her appreciate the unity brought about by repeated experiences of disasters throughout the region. She said just as she sees mountain infrastructure buckle under increasingly severe storms, neighbors will need to keep these networks and supply lines organized and ready.

“From my point of view, climate change is very real and we are the first to get the brunt,” Ellis said.

“Just, what's going to do next time we're going to do something, what's this like?” Ellis added. It is necessary for ordinary people to pay attention to each other. “Because at this point it feels like there is nothing to do on a global scale or even on a federal scale that can prevent these disasters.”

Note: Katie Myers worked with Willa Johnson from 2021 to 2023 at the Center for Media, Arts and Education in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

Originally published by Grist, the story is part of Climate Now, a global news collaboration that enhances the reporting of climate stories.