HAZARD, Ky. (LEX 18) — As rain is set to hit the area this weekend, communities in eastern Kentucky are preparing for the possibility of flooding that may emulate the deadly flooding in 2022.
“It was a thousand-year event, you don't go through an event like that without having some of that hanging around all the time,” Jerry Stacy said of the historic flooding of 2022.
Stacy is the county’s Emergency Management Services Director, who is organizing his team for a response to flooding that could occur on Saturday once the rain begins to fall and pile up.
“Ya know, these mountains, water is up here; it's coming down here. Hills and hollers. Just two to three inches of rain will be a problem for us,” Stacy added. “And the ground is already saturated from the rain and snow we’ve had."
The storm of 2022 produced about 12 inches of rain across much of the region damaging homes, schools, businesses, roads, and bridges while killing more than three dozen people. Saturday’s storm isn’t expected to do that kind of damage, but as Stacy said, it only takes a few inches.
“It can't help but make the community nervous and it's got us in full gear prepping for anything we can do prior to the event happening,” Judge/Executive Scott Alexander said.
Alexander said the county is doing everything in its power to prepare for this storm.
“Get good information out to the community. We contact all our volunteer fire departments. The roads department will stock up on rock and getting extra pipe in,” Alexander explained, before conceding that only so much can be done in advance of an unpredictable result.
Alexander said about 80 to 90 percent of the county that was damaged by the 2022 storms has been rebuilt. Some of it better and more efficiently than it was before that fateful day.
“Lots of times with FEMA you can go up in pipe size, to hold more water. Any time we can upgrade we try to, but a lot of time it has to go back to the original way it was, but we added bigger rock, better rock as we rebuild," Alexander added.
Perhaps their best defense against what might happen on Saturday is the awareness of what can happen when things are at their worst, and their willingness to prepare for such.
“Our people are really conscious of flooding now, way more than in 2022, and naturally so.” Stacy said. ”It’s all about preparing and getting the message out. It doesn’t take a lot for us to have a lot of problems with flooding,” he added.
