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As flood recovery efforts continue in the north central part of the state, officials have now confirmed two deaths.
The victims were a husband and wife in their late 60s or early 70s who were well known in the community. Buckhannon Mayor Robbie Skinner said they lived in a remote area near Stonecoal Lake.
“That area received a significant amount of rain, maybe even a little bit more than what we got here in downtown Buckhannon,” Skinner said. “And when you leave Buckhannon to go toward that area, it’s straight downhill.”
There’s a very quick, 500-foot drop, and several wooden bridges in the area were washed out, Skinner said.
“That water’s got to go somewhere coming down through that ravine, and it just rose too quickly for them to get out.”
As much as seven inches of rain came down in a brief time when a massive storm system pummeled the state on Tuesday, but Barbour, Lewis and Upshur Counties were the hardest hit. There were no other reports of victims, but more than 1,000 homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed.
Skinner said he is grateful the losses were few, but said in such a small, close-knit community, two is too many. Everyone else, Skinner said, has been accounted for.
“Now, that doesn’t mean that everybody is reachable, but they are accounted for,” he said. “We are still working to get to some of the most remote places to connect them back to reality.”
The volume of rain was overwhelming, Skinner said, but it has been met with an enormous amount of help from across the state.
“We have people from the northern part, southern parts, western part, eastern part, all coming here to the middle to meet us where we are and help,” he said. “It’s been a tragedy, but there’s been a lot of blessings. We are hearty, we are strong, and we will get through this, and we will come back better.”
Thousands of emergency responders, national guard members and volunteers are working to clear the debris, restore the roads and bridges, and get things in the flood-ravaged region back to normal. The National Guard reduced its workforce on Friday but expected to have hundreds of members on site into early August.