Recovery crews, National Guard search for victims of deadly Appalachian floods

by Mary Massingale
The Associated Press

KEYSTONE, W.Va. ­ Streams began receding Saturday in the ravaged central Appalachians as rescue workers searched the hills and valleys for more victims of devastating floods that killed at least six people.

Amid light rain, recovery crews worked to reopen roads blocked by mud, boulders and washouts in the region that encompasses parts of southern West Virginia, western Virginia and eastern Kentucky.

"All we've got is water and mud now. That's it," Cathy Hall said in Hurley, Va., weeping softly as she stood in a foot of soupy mud outside the Grundy National Bank branch office where she worked.

Tinnie Gravely, 35, of Welch, took her four young children to a shelter and expressed fear for her town's recovery.

"It would be a miracle," Gravely said. "Everything's gone. It's a ghost town."

Torrents of water from a drenching storm poured down steep mountainsides and overflowed from streams and rivers winding through narrow valleys in the three states on Thursday and Friday.

The death toll rose Saturday when a tree loosened by the flooding crashed down a hill along U.S. 52 onto a sports utility vehicle, killing one of two adults inside. Three children scrambled out the back with minor injuries. A few hundred feet away, trees on the hillside creaked audibly.

The vehicle was registered to a couple who had been living in emergency housing since they were left homeless by last July's record flooding, the Rev. Hilda Kennedy said tearfully at the accident site.

"They were sleeping with rats before we got them to New Hope Village (housing)," said Kennedy, program director of the Highland Educational Project in Keystone.