Two people are dead after dangerous flooding slammed West Virginia earlier this week, and Gov. Patrick Morrisey responded by declaring a state of emergency across all 55 counties after homes and businesses were destroyed on July 21. The declaration put the entire state under an emergency response even as water kept rising in hard-hit communities.
The urgency grew because the rain did not fall in one place slowly. More than 7 inches came down in Upshur County in a roughly six-hour stretch beginning Tuesday afternoon, and first responders said they were flooded with hundreds of calls for help after a Flash Flood Emergency hit Lewis, Randolph and Upshur counties. The National Weather Service had already labeled the warning a Particularly Dangerous Situation, a signal that the weather could become life-threatening quickly.
Morrisey said Wednesday that 310 National Guard personnel had been deployed, including helicopter units, as rescue and recovery efforts spread across the state. The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources carried out at least 85 water rescues on Tuesday, and the City of Buckhannon issued an Immediate Evacuation Order early Wednesday for parts of the city. In one of the more striking details of the emergency response, state officials had issued a State of Preparedness earlier in the day, ahead of the severe weather, but it was not enough to prevent deaths and widespread damage.
That gap is what makes this flood story so severe: the warning came before the worst of the rain, but the storm still tore through roads, homes and businesses, leaving emergency crews to race from one call to the next. Morrisey said the storm did real damage to the state, and the scale of the deployment suggests the immediate focus now is keeping people out of the water and off damaged roads while rescue teams finish the work already underway.
The state emergency remains in force across all 55 counties, and the key unanswered question is how long floodwaters will linger before recovery can begin in earnest. For residents in Lewis, Randolph, Upshur and Buckhannon, the damage is already done; what happens next will be measured in rescues completed, evacuations enforced and the long count of what the flooding destroyed.
