CHARLESTON, W.Va. — June 23, 2016 will forever be a haunting memory for those in communities like Clendenin and Richwood or throughout Clay, Greenbrier, Nicholas and Webster counties. Heavy rains that day forced streams to rise quickly and before the day was over 23 West Virginians had been killed.
“It’s complete utter devastation. Roads are out, power is out. We’ve have homes on fire floating down the river, homes washed off their foundation. People have been here for decades and never seen anything like this from White Sulphur to Rainelle it’s complete devastation,” said Jan Cahill, who at the time was the Greenbrier County Sheriff and spoke live on the West Virginia Morning News.
In many cases, first responders were involved in heroic actions which saved numerous lives.
“In Richwood, State Police and local responders managed to rescue a woman trapped in her car with water up to her neck,” said Governor Earl Ray Tomblin. “Members of the West Virginia National Guard and firefighters across the state have risked their own lives to rescue people trapped on roof tops and from overflowing rivers.”
The storm struck suddenly, much of it in the darkness, and made a long but narrow diagonal stripe across West Virginia from Jackson County to Greenbrier County.
“We’ve had relentless rounds of showers and thunderstorms right through the heart of West Virginia,” said Ken Batty, Meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Charleston. “You draw a line from Ravenswood and Parkersburg and go south-southeast through the Elk River Valley including Clay County then right on down into Nicholas and Webster and then spilling over the mountains into Greenbrier County, that’s been the heaviest rain.”
Thousands of homes were destroyed, thousands more were damaged. For the rest of the summer, residents in those impacted areas worked to rebuild their lives and clean up the mess. For many, they left to never return. Others were resilient and rebuilt in the same spot, hoping to build back in such a way they would be insulated from the next flooding rains.
There were years of hardships for many victims. A lot of them gave up on FEMA and most had given up on the state’s help. Even today, the RISE West Virginia program is still in the process of rebuilding those homes destroyed four years ago. Although construction is finally starting, the replacements for two schools in Kanawha County and three in Nicholas County are still yet to be finished. An entire class has gone through Herbert Hoover High School and Richwood High Schools and never set foot in a permanent high school building.
It remains one of the worst and most deadly floods in West Virginia history.