The last natural disaster to hit the United States, a flood in Kentucky, has one surname above all else: Noble. Four children from this family died last Thursday when the skies opened up over the remote Appalachia region, one of the poorest in the western state. The water left behind the bodies of Maddison, Riley, Nevaeh and Chance Noble, aged eight, six, four and one. When their time came, they were with their parents, both in their 20s who survived. According to the authorities, there are at least 25 victims in total. And the governor, Democrat Andy Beshear, fears the number will be even higher, he told media on Saturday. “Our goal remains to get as many people to safety as possible,” he said. Flooding this week is unprecedented in the region.
Since Thursday, National Guard members from Kentucky, Tennessee (neighbors to the south) and West Virginia (to the west) have joined local police and agents from the Department of Fish and Wildlife in a bid to rescue survivors making their living on the roofs of their flimsy homes climb.
“It is very difficult at this time to know how many people have disappeared given the extent of the destruction and the areas affected,” said Gov. Beshear, who experienced another natural disaster last December with a series of tornadoes affecting the western part of the country State, with the city of Mayfield as the epicenter of a meteorological phenomenon as devastating as it was historic. So, Beshear—one of the youngest governors in the United States, who took the reins of the disaster in part through a personal connection (his family hails from Dawson Springs, one of the most wind-ravaged areas)—Several days for a long time she offered numbers of victims in excess of the 77 that were eventually reported.
Image of one of the affected areas taken from a US ARMY NATIONAL GUARD helicopter (via Portal)
The rescue work is made more difficult by the fact that the mobile phone service and the power supply are interrupted in large parts of the affected areas. “The water is still high in many counties,” Beshear warned in an interview with CNN.
The day before the Kentucky rains, an unprecedented storm hit St. Louis, Missouri, killing one person. Both events, which climatologists call extraordinary (because they only happen once every thousand years, according to The Washington Post), were caused by the same atmospheric configuration and illustrate the kind of unprecedented events forecasters must expect to see more frequently given the rate at which global warming is occurring progresses.
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A family waits to hear of family members missing as a result of flooding in Jackson, Kentucky. LEANDRO LOZADA (AFP)
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