‘I was figuring we were gonna die.’ Ky. flood victims recall narrow escapes, begin cleanup.

Bobbie Noble didn’t know if she could do it.

Noble gripped the steering wheel. She was stuck on a high stretch of road between a home she had just left and a road swelling with rushing, muddy water – her car was stuffed with her four children, husband and three pets.

Recalling the morning from a provisional shelter set up at Gospel Light, a church outside of Hazard, Noble said that she had almost resigned herself to death when she looked at the road gushing with water before her.

“I couldn’t go back. I just kept looking at them. My daughter was scared and she said ‘Mommy what are we gonna do.’ I was figuring we were gonna die.”

She floored it. Their car scooted through the water for several yards, right through the flooding Caney Creek.

The family made it out of the muck, only to later get surrounded, though safe, at Noble’s grandmother’s house. With hungry children in the house, Noble and her husband took four-wheelers to get food and supplies. On their way back, they wrecked and had to walk home – their only way out was a helicopter rescue.

Larissa Miller, a local physician’s assistant helping the wounded at Gospel Light, said that a majority of the people seeking shelter there – more than 40 on Thursday and 87 on Friday – were rescued by helicopter.

Because of that, long foot travel and foot injuries had been a common sight.

“They all came with no type of shoes on. If they did have them on, they were destroyed,” Miller said.

In the same holler as Noble, her cousin Jerry Fugate was outside of his home preparing for the oncoming flood when he saw a flash of a car.

“There was a car that come down the creek and hit into a building we had behind the house. It knocked that building into our house, and the house just took off,” like dominoes, Fugate said.

His mother and daughter were in the house.

“I swam,” Fugate said, recalling how as the house was floating it dragged along the ground enough for him to shepherd his family out of the kitchen door. The initial tide was weak enough for them to grab onto branches and work their way towards a nearby hill.

What was lost

Four months ago, Chris Barker got a call. An insurance agent wanted to sell him flood insurance for his vintage arcade in downtown Whitesburg, Atomic Raid.

“A little lady spoke to me and wanted to sell me flood insurance. I said ‘I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never seen it get into the road,’” Barker recalled. “I should have known since I’m usually the type that prepares for everything.”

On Thursday, he came down from his house a half-mile away to find all of his arcade games, up to $80,000 worth, floating in the muddy water.

Barker had operated the business for about four years, trying to give kids and fun-seeking adults alike something to do in a region sometimes lacking in options.

But the machines “are things that can just be bought,” so he grabbed some rope and tied himself to a rail in a dry area. Barker set up a line of rope running from the dry area to some quickly-flooding apartments where people were trapped.

Across main street, John Haywood found his found his tattoo shop ruined in the aftermath. Mud caked the floor. Water had seeped into his sketchbooks dating back 20 years or more.

Haywood’s “The Parlor Room” is renowned for its classic, flash-design tattoo style.

He said the shop served as a community space for other artists, or just people trying to blow off some steam and hang out after work.

The shop’s been there for 11 years. A native of Pike County, Haywood started it after growing disillusioned with city life in Louisville.

“When you’re out there in the city like Louisville or someplace you kind of feel like an alien. So you’re like, ‘Man, I want to do this at home,’ you know? For folks that are like the people where I’m from,” Haywood said.

Haywood’s own art and several instruments – he’s an accomplished banjo and guitar player – line the walls. He lamented that his band, Appalachiatari, lost their practice space and equipment entirely, but felt confident that Whitesburg’s art community would rebound.

“The art is up here,” Haywood said pointing to his head. “The music is up here. So we’re just gonna get back at it.”

In Perry County, David Pence pondered the damage to his trailer holler community of Dwarf for all of his 52 years.

“It’s probably one of the peaceful-est places you could live,” Pence said.

He’s not so sure he can get back to it now.

Pence hadn’t insured anything.

Nearly all of his possessions, including a prized Yamaha XS 650 motorcycle, were lost or too damaged by the floodwaters to reuse.

Nobody interviewed for this story had insurance on their flooded structures.

What’s next?

For now, those seeking shelter can generally find it.

That’s just what Noble, and her neighbors Russ and Karen Daugherty, found in Gospel Light.

And the help has rushed in.

Pastor Chris Fugate took a call on Friday night from a baptist church in Michigan. They had a truckload of supplies to drop off.

Flush with clothes, cleaning supplies, food and blankets, Gospel Light had more than enough supplies to care for its 87 shelter-seekers.

Fugate, a retired state trooper who also represents the area in the state House as a Republican, said that the relief efforts were a coordinated effort from the state National Guard to the local emergency management director all the way down to generous churchgoers.

“It’s just people from all over the state, really, have called – some people I know, some Idon’t have a clue who they are. I don’t know how they heard about it,” Fugate said. “Well, I actually do know: the Lord sent them.

“And if there’s one thing about East Kentucky, we take care of each other.”

Fugate remarked that a majority of those seeking shelter in Gospel Light on Thursday were from Noble’s neck of the woods in Breathitt County.

“We had 42 people last night just from River Caney – just one little community. They were all pretty much kin and lived beside each other. It wiped out the whole community.”

Russ and Karen Daugherty said that their entire community was ravaged.

“We had lost everything about two years ago to a house fire. We wasn’t even back on our feet from that yet,” Karen Daugherty said.

They said they were living in a shed with their children for the moment, on land that was owned by their family. The shed and everything in it got completely ruined in the flood – including two new outfits each for their daughters.

But the Daughertys, and everyone who made it on the other side of the disaster, expressed their thanks for what they still had: each other.

Not to mention their sense of humor.

“The only good part of it is we have no electric bills,” Noble joked.