RICHWOOD, W.Va. — One week ago, the people of Richwood were voting for a new mayor–unaware of how much life would be changing two days later when historic flooding ravaged the 2,000 person town.
The election itself was fairly abnormal. Bob Henry Baber, one of two former Richwood mayors in the race, defeated nine other challengers including one former mayor as well as current mayor Bob Johnson. He won by a single vote after provisional ballots were included.
Two days later, the town was under water–literally. It would be easy to forgive the people living there for not basking in their strange mayoral race a little longer. For now, they’d just like something to be normal again.
“It’ll come back,” Virginia Bennett, a lifelong resident of Richwood, said. “It’ll come back stronger than ever.”
Homes, businesses, and Richwood High School all took extensive damage from several feet of rushing water. Bennett said she had never seen anything like it. More than 100 residents at Nicholas County’s only nursing home had to be relocated out of the Richwood building and into Liberty Baptist Church on higher ground. They have since been moved to other nursing homes in the state.
“I just looked over and a bunch of water was coming down,” she said. “It looked like Niagra Falls on Oakford Avenue. You could see rocks and debris floating down with it. It was a sight that you’ll never forget.”
In the town’s lower elevation areas near the High School and Cherry River Plaza, streets are lined with broken valuables that are being thrown away and pieces of broken roads that settled where they don’t belong.
Just days ago, the gymnasium adjacent to Richwood High School was uninhabitable. It was a probation officer, six volunteers, a school janitor, and the Richwood Fire Department that initiated the clean-up process.
“There was just mud caked on the floor,” Kissy DeRito, a Nicholas County Probation Officer, said. “It had already begun to dry. The hallway was filled with mud. The bathroom’s still actually have mud in them.”
After two or three hours of work, the Richwood Fire Department made sure the gymnasium was sanitized and ready to become the town’s post-flood central hub. Now, that’s where the town goes to remain fed, clothed, and supplied.
“I just came over and started bleaching and cleaning and trucks started coming in and piling stuff on the bleachers,” Kissy DeRito said. “It went from there. I just started organizing. Everybody in the community has come to help. I got on Facebook and said, ‘I need help.’ And they came.”
It has been a familiar refrain across West Virginia’s most flood-ravaged areas: neighbors banding together to get people the help they need and volunteers coming from anywhere and everywhere to lend a hand. Virginia Bennett said it was a reflection on the resiliency of not just the town, but her fellow West Virginians as well.
“This is everybody’s home town,” Bennett said. “Not just mine. Not just the mayor’s. This is everybody’s home town.”
Even with a gymnasium overloading with so many supplies that DeRito said they were able to pass along overflow items to neighboring communities, there are some things that the volunteers and The National Guard simply can’t accomplish. The Rite Aid store in Cherry River Plaza suffered extensive damage from the storm, and people still need prescriptions. Rite Aid is setting up a mobile operation that allows their customers to fill prescriptions. The first one launched in Rainelle on Monday. The second one launched in Richwood Tuesday.
“In these smaller communities, there is definitely a lot of folks that don’t have the transportation,” Daniel Pina, Rite Aid’s Regional Vice President, said Tuesday. “Given the recent events, many people lost their vehicles and their transportation.”
The historic flooding didn’t claim any lives in Richwood, but residents will tell you it claimed peace of mind, security, normalcy, and nearly everything else.
“They are calling it a hundred year flood,” DeRito said. “It’s absolutely heartbreaking to see all of the people and families who lost everything. We had an older gentleman pull up with a cane that just had all of his pictures piled in the back of his car. He said that was all he could get out, and he lost everything.”
For now, normalcy will mean something far different in Richwood than it did one week ago.