Rescue workers still searching ‘every inch of every stream’ for Kentucky flood victims

The number of confirmed deaths from Eastern Kentucky’s disastrous flooding stood at 37 on Monday evening, with the largest number in Knott County, Gov. Andy Beshear told reporters.

Also, more rain fell Sunday and Monday on some of the flood-damaged counties, causing waters to start rising again. And search-and-rescue work continued across the region, with emergency crews and volunteers digging through debris for survivors and bodies.

“We’re gonna search every inch of every stream,” said Jerry Stacy, Perry County’s emergency management director.

Even as searchers kept at their work Monday, Beshear said the state is focused on helping survivors to rebuild their lives. He issued an emergency order streamlining the process for jobless benefits applications in the flood-ravaged counties, and he announced that 100 travel trailers are being rushed to the area for temporary housing from their previous location — communities wrecked by tornadoes last winter in Western Kentucky.

Nearly 400 displaced people were reported to be housed at state resort parks in the region or Red Cross shelters. Electricity finally has been restored to Buckhorn Lake State Resort Park near Hazard, with water service hopefully to be restored shortly, providing another shelter alternative, Beshear said.

However, family and friends already are taking in people who have lost their homes to the floods, Beshear said, so not everyone will need shelter from the state.

“Now, what always happens in Kentucky is, relatives and others reach out,” Beshear said. “That has always been — even when we’re working on all the other options — the No. 1 way that we take care of each other in Kentucky.”

The first seventeen travel trailers, which will house people displaced by flooding, arrived at Jenny Wiley State Park Monday afternoon, according to Beshear.

Beshear said he is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to expand the area that is eligible for individual disaster assistance to include Floyd, Johnson, Leslie, Magoffin, Martin, Owsley and Pike counties.

FEMA has announced that renters and homeowners in Breathitt, Clay, Knott, Letcher and Perry counties who were affected by the floods and mudslides can apply for individual disaster assistance. Applications can be filed online at www.disasterassistance.gov or by calling 1-800-621-3362.

Repairs to state roads began Monday, Beshear said. State crews have inspected 627 public bridges in the affected counties, he said, 21 of which have problems of various kinds, including some that are washed out. That count does not include small, private bridges connecting people’s homes to the road, “and a lot of those bridges are gone,” he said.

Beshear said several school districts in the region probably will need to delay the start of their school years — he named Letcher, Knott and Perry counties as examples — because of damaged school buildings and other lost infrastructure, including roads and bridges used by school buses. At least one school in the region was so badly flooded that it almost certainly can’t be repaired for use this year, if it can be saved at all, the governor said.

In an interview with the Herald-Leader on Monday, Knott County schools Superintendent Brent Hoover said his district, with an enrollment of about 2,400 students, had been scheduled to start classes Aug. 10.

“That’s not gonna happen,” Hoover said. “That’s all I know at this time.”

Three of the district’s seven schools were flooded last week, Hoover said: Hindman Elementary, Knot Central High and Knott County Area Technical Center. A commercial cleaning crew started work inside the schools Sunday, but even after that is finished, inspectors must determine how badly the buildings and their equipment were damaged, he said.

Also on Monday, Beshear said he and his wife have canceled their plans to visit Israel next weekend, citing a need for him to stay on the ground in Kentucky and oversee the state’s response to the floods. Beshear visited several counties in the region over the weekend.