BREATHITT COUNTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — Earlier this week we told you how a Breathitt County mother tied her family together to escape raging flood waters. Jessica Willett's story resonated with so many LEX 18 viewers that we wanted to share more of our interview with her.
Willett was already overwhelmed by how many people, mostly strangers, donated to the family's Gofundme page.
She told us, "I've cried all day yesterday and today because it's more than what I could ever have imagined, and they don't know me." Friday afternoon $54,340 dollars.
The family lost everything last Thursday when the creek across the road surrounded their mobile home. Willett and her children had to escape out of a bedroom window before braving the raging knee-deep water.
"We did, my window," said three-year-old Isaiah. Willet told LEX 18 she didn't think they would make it out of their trailer because "You could hear the floors popping and cracking," she said. "Feel it bowing." She said if they weren't tied together and didn't leave when they did, "We would've been swept away, we would have been not together."
Willet has been staying with her family until they can rebuild their lives.
When asked if they would go back where they lived she said, "I don't have nowhere else to go that's my home. My dad and my uncle was born there, my dad born right up the road from there."
"That's my home, we'll go back we'll just build stronger this time. We'll be more wiser, I'll be more weather aware - that's all I can do."
