Image from Gazette Mail’s Twitter page - President Barack Obama declares state of disaster in West Virginia
- 26 people were recorded dead in the worst flooding incident to hit the state
- 100 homes were left devastated and thousands of households are experiencing power outage
At least 26 people were declared dead due to the worst flooding incident West Virginia faced; leaving the United States (US) President Barack Obama to declare a state of disaster in the region.
The death toll over the flooding rose to 26 on Saturday, June 25, from the original 24 count. The deadly incident was caused by a torrential rain that ran for days.
Rappler quoted a White House statement saying the President has “ordered federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts in the area affected by severe storms, flooding, landslides and mudslides.”
These areas were identified to be the counties of Greenbrier, Kanawha and Nicholas.
The powerful rains caused the destruction of over 100 homes and the closure of roads and bridges.
According to the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security, there are over 21,300 people affected with power outage.
The National Weather Service has described the amount of rain that poured in such short a time was a “one-in-a-thousand-year” likelihood.
USA Today cited state climatologist Kevin Law as saying that the recent flooding was the third deadliest recorded in the state in recent history.
“Only the Buffalo Creek flood in 1972 (when 125 died after a dam break) and a November 1985 flood (when 38 died from a combination of Hurricane Juan’s remnants and another storm) killed more in the state,” Law said in the story.
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