WELCH, W.Va. — The McDowell County Commission continued to lead the effort to help the county recover from the 2025 February flood. Sunday marked the first anniversary of the high water event which left dozens of homes and businesses along with roads and bridges in ruin. The recovery has been slow.
“We got hit county-wide so it was devastating to our entire county and the citizens of our county, but we just started picking up the pieces and putting it back together little by little,” said County Commissioner Cecil Patterson.
There are still parts of the county where bridges are missing and roads are still not passable. But Commissioner Michael Brooks said those aren’t going to be easy fixes.
“It’s not something your local outpost of the Department of Highways can take care of. It takes specialized equipment and you only have X number of those contractors in the state,” Brooks added.
Brooks said what people also don’t understand is that the flood in their region happened at the height of Hurricane Helene’s damage and recovery across much of the south. Volunteer organizations which typically travel to West Virginia to assist were stretched thin already and couldn’t send nearly as many volunteers. Brooks said that has made the recovery much more difficult.
“There’s still families, businesses, and places still rebuilding and still trying to get back to normal,” said local businessman Robert Diaz.
Diaz was best known for turning his restaurant, Latin Appalachia, into a food kitchen for a full month to serve relief workers and flood victims alike. He was able to do so since he had incurred minimal damage, or so he thought. He wound up being forced to replace about a 50 square foot area when the sub-floor began to rot from the flood exposure. The experience changed up his whole business model.
“We started a non-profit. Our restaurant is actually donation based. If people are having a hard time, they can come in and get a meal, no questions asked. If they’re able to pay, they pay and if they can’t they don’t have to,” he said.
Diaz was so inspired by the work he was involved in over the past year, he’s decided to run for the McDowell County Commission. He said it has nothing to do with the present commissioners who he believes did the best with what they had. He said the Commission would fuel his passion to help the community.
“We chose to stay here because the people went from people we knew to being our friends and really part of our family. If you’re part of a good family, you fight for your family or die for your family. That’s what we do and that’s what we say. That’s what a lot of McDowell County is, it’s one big family, ” he said.