When it Floods, and You Are in It

Cathy Rigg Monetti

The third time the emergency alert awakened me, I fumbled for my phone. It was dark, darkest dark, the spotlight just outside the window at my bed for once not shining through to illuminate our tiny, shared room. Power must be out, no surprise there given the evening’s heavy rain. I laid awake accounting. I’d come up from the gathering around 11 p.m. Sometime after, one roommate had returned and settled, and there was some vague recollection roommate two had eventually reappeared, as well. What time was it now? I shook my phone to check—it was just after 3—then held the button down to turn the power off. There was no need to hear these alarms all night when there was nothing to be done about the dreadful weather. Plus tomorrow was going to be a big day for all of us attending the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. There was the full slate of morning seminars, that highly anticipated Silas House/Little Bubby Child session in the afternoon, and the week’s evening keynote featuring Dopesick’s Beth Macy. We all needed sleep.

6:50 a.m.  Morning came via a knocking on the door. Not a pounding, exactly, but an insisting nonetheless. A text had come, meant for everyone housed in Preece, the dorm built highest on the campus of the Hindman Settlement School. Don’t drink from the tap. There is flooding and a fear gasoline has leaked into Hindman’s water.

“Is it okay to shower?” someone asked. Or maybe this was something I wondered, as I’d planned to get moving early, eager to claim an audit seat in Nickole’s poetry class. That’s when several from our group stepped to the front porch for a look down the hill. There came a collective gasp so deep as to suck the very air from the rooms of Preece. Water was everywhere.

Another text. Tiny Troublesome Creek had risen wildly in the hours between midnight and 3. All over campus, folks had been roused from their beds to wade into dark, mucky water to move cars, move possessions, move their bodies to higher ground. Many were still collected just below us in Stucky, where they had spent the next horrifying hours in a kind of communal shock, watching the waters rise via quick, harsh flashes of lightning.

There were twelve or thirteen of us in Preece, and for a while we all wandered in dazed disbelief. I learned later there had been an attempt to reach us in the night but water rushed down the mountain with so much force rescuers couldn’t get up the hill. I saw later that, in fact, portions of the road they tried to climb had washed out. Chunks of asphalt littered the drive and one mudslide had already established itself against the right front tire of the first in a string of relocated vehicles.

Speculation became the game. Would there be breakfast? Who had bottled water? Did anybody know—could we use the toilets? One roommate, Chelyen, a former reporter, geared up and headed straight out, eager for a first-hand look at the developing situation. Kristi and I quickly dressed then convinced each other it would be best if we simply held tight. We were safe; we were on high ground; official word would surely come shortly and with it would be the clarity we needed to navigate this unexpected and unfathomable situation.

Wait, we did. And pace. And hypothesize, as text after text carried more detail from all around campus. The town of Hindman proper was under water. The Appalachian Artisan Center had collapsed. We were cut off, the bridge connecting the Settlement School to Highway 160 fully breeched. Rachel’s truck, which had been parked in the lower lot, was now in the river, and several other attendee vehicles had been submerged and were trashed. The school’s beautiful administrative offices—which I had just visited and had commented on how nice it must be to work in a place so peaceful—had been completely overrun and several feet of flood and mud and muck remained. As had the archives, the greatest of the campus’ potential losses, as they held irreplaceable literary treasures and records of Appalachian history. The archives couldn’t even be reached. And the footbridge? The beloved Hindman footbridge, that sat so high and served so nobly as campus connecter and icon both? Trickle to flood, Troublesome had overtaken it, rising a rapid twenty feet during the night. The bridge had disappeared, just disappeared, whether submerged or wiped away, it was impossible to tell.

And the forecast was for rain. More rain, and more rain, and more rain.

8:45 a.m.  Eventually I put on my jacket and headed down the hill. I did this with trepidation, literally descending into a flood I knew would be far worse than my conscious mind had dared allow. But I needed information, some indication of what we were advised to do next. High over Hindman I turned a sharp corner to see a scene below that gutted me. Water, so much filthy water, debris floating and the smell of gasoline so strong even at my elevation it was choking. People wandered about, dazed: my fellow writers, the Settlement School staff, workshop instructors, many of whom had been saviors and also witnesses to this disaster all through the terrifying night. There was an effort to get cars that had been relocated moved again, as now they blocked each other and also the steep drive I walked down from Preece. Flooding had receded some, and for the moment the bridge connecting us to Highway 160 looked passable. Nevertheless, should we stay? The option, to me, seemed more sensible, more sure, although there was no potable water, no electricity, no way to feed us. Should I go? If so, in what direction? My way here had been through Whitesburg, a route that meant miles and miles of windy mountain roads, many of which paralleled water. Some folks discussed heading for Hazard, what direction was that? Would it be safe? I couldn’t get a map to load on my phone; how would I ever figure the right route to take in a state I didn’t know?

I walked back to my room. I packed my things. I loaded them into my car, all the while thinking I may leave, I may not. I had made no decision, but others were talking about the potential for getting stuck at Preece, about the continuing rain making mud a significant risk that at any moment could rumble to life and overtake our already-compromised drive and leave anyone up here stranded. It would be impossible to get our vehicles out, they said, and I stood at my opened trunk and turned to look up. What was above us? The mountain continued on, all forest and trees, but if something were to come barreling with the force to take out the road, then who’s to say this building…

And so I got in. I’ll just move my car to the mid-campus lot. This seemed a reasonable thing to do, so I started the engine, the wipers came to life, and I inched my way along Preece’s flat drive knowing there, just ahead, lay the 90-degree no-return turn. I rounded the familiar curve. My body was on edge as my SUV crept down the hill, dodging potholes and widened cracks, avoiding good-sized clumps of newly uprooted asphalt. “CALL TIM,” I said without thinking, hoping my phone would connect to the car’s audio system and that my husband had, in fact, been tracking the flooding. We have ten seconds, I said when he answered. Do I stay or do I go.

Go, he said, there was no hesitation. You have to get out of that flood.

I was at the bottom; in her running SUV I saw my friend, Erin, a Kentucky native and Tennessee resident whom I knew took the same route home that I did. I pulled behind her and waved and in pouring rain sweet Erin got out and came to stand at my window. “The bridge is open and I’m going,” she said. “I’m heading for Hazard.”

“Okay, me too,” I said. It was a split-second decision filled with so much worry. A Preece resident had gotten word The Weather Channel was covering the disaster, and the report was that Hindman and Whitesburg both were under water. Hazard was flooded, too. “But Erin. I don’t know the way. So please don’t leave me.” She nodded, and I pulled up close behind her, and with her in the lead, the two of us took out.

10:20 a.m.  Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, is how it felt, how can this be and is this a good decision and my roommates don’t even know I’m leaving. Nobody did. Then onto the Settlement School bridge we drove. We crossed the angry river—There’s Rachel’s truck! Could that really be Tamela’s motorcycle? Just a few days ago we’d looked at recent photos of her amazing maiden ride through the majestic Swiss Alps. The new bike lay there, now, caked in flood mud, the very picture—I had to acknowledge—of a valiant fighter forced to concede. Oh Troublesome, I said to no one, and just at that moment I realized I didn’t even have Erin’s contact info programmed into my phone.

We’d gone hardly a half mile when we came to our first lane closure. Was it a landslide? There was flood debris piled high, and policemen and rescue workers and sundry others circled about as automobiles slowed to a crawl to make their careful way around the wreckage. I can see it now, in my head, although the entire event is a jumble. Were we over a river? Was there a hill to the left, from whence the pile might have come? I felt such shock and disbelief I cannot now recall, if it ever registered at all. I’m driving through a raging flood, is all I could think, a massive, devastating flood, and I don’t know where there is water and I don’t know which roads are out and I don’t know which route I should take or if there is even a right choice to make. Oh, and right about then it came to me I might ought to check my gas gauge. It registered a quarter tank.

My mobile rang; it was Erin. Thank god it was Erin, for now her number was captured in my phone. For the life of me I can’t remember why she called, but I distinctly remember the feeling of gratitude as it rooted in my very soul. I was with a friend. She knew the way to Hazard. All that was required of me, at this time, was to follow her and drive. Plus this road was a good one, a four-lane perhaps, although even that fact now escapes me. I should call Tim. I’m headed for Hazard. I need a route home. Can you find me a safe route home? How does one go about that, I wondered? Check The Weather Channel, Google Maps, whatever there is. You’ll need to know which roads are flooded.

“Give me a minute,” he said.

“Text me when you have it,” I said. “I’m too stressed to remember, and my phone still won’t load a map.”

“You don’t have a map?”

No map at all.

Then, look! Just ahead! There was gas. And in a force of miracle, Erin saw my signal and pulled over alongside me to the station. The first readout said: PUMP OFFLINE. As did the second, as did the third, as did every dang pump dotting the lot. Of course this was the situation. My head accepted this rationally, but my heart sank as I followed Erin back to the highway and again, we carried on.

Text, then a phone call. 80 West to 421 South to Duffield. It’s that simple. Just be sure you stay on 80 West. And DO NOT GO TO DOWNTOWN HAZARD. It is under water.

Ohmygod we were approaching Hazard and where was downtown and up there was an open gas station and I think this is 80 West but also there is a sign to 80 W Exit Right and in haste I took it. In equal haste I dialed Erin just as her taillights faded. 80 West. Don’t we need 80 West? I think you had to turn to stay on 80 West. For a moment we discussed, and as we did the highway I’d chosen narrowed, and it began to descend, and then in no time—and before my unbelieving eyes—became a windy two-lane backroad that wound along a river that disappeared before me into the deep dark folds of a mountain.

I spotted a country church; there was a small gravel lot and I pulled in and put my car in park. “This cannot be right,” I said to Erin. I must have turned wrong or missed a sign or misunderstood Tim’s directions. I was thinking this, although I could not for the life of me figure how it could be and I was trying to remember to just breathe, Cathy, breathe.

“Should I come back?” Erin asked. “Should we try to find a place to meet?”

I don’t know where I am, I said.

There was a pause, a consideration. “The road I’m on is still good,” she said. “I feel like I should stay on it. Go toward Whitesburg. I’ll wait for you. I’ll pull over, do you want to come? I’ll wait.”

I could not process. I had to decide. I was afraid of Whitesburg, of the roads once we got there, of the “under water” comments we’d heard in Preece. And I felt particular fear—something I’ve just realized now—because this was the only route I could picture. Year after year I’d made my way to this same writers’ workshop, traveling South Carolina to North Carolina to Tennessee to Virginia. The last sixty miles took me Wise to Pound then across the border to Kentucky, where a curvy two-lane road through Whitesburg delivered me to Hindman. This was a route I knew; just four days ago I’d driven it, on a perfect summer day, the kind made for travel. My heart’d felt as light and bright as the green of the mountains, the gold of the sun, the frolic of the white puffy clouds as they bounced and teased their way along the tops of the old Appalachians.

“I’m afraid of Whitesburg,” I said. “But please, do what you think is right. You know this state way better than I do.”

There was a pause, a deep consideration. And then: “Okay. If you’re sure.”

“I am,” I said. I was.

“I’ll check in,” Erin said.

Okay, my friend. Me, too. Thanks for getting me this far. You be safe. Click. Click.

 10:55 a.m.  I was genuinely glad Erin had continued on, for it was not lost on me I had no informed perspective to offer, given the situation. Still I sat by that river as the realization washed over me: I had made a hasty decision to divert, and now I was alone, in a car, on the side of a two-lane road in a region being ravaged by active flooding. I had no map, no sense of direction, no real understanding of the state’s geography or the web of its particular road systems. I had no reliable information on which to base a decision about how best to avoid flooded towns or bridges or roadways, and mudslides were of particular concern, given both the natural topography of these mountains and the many areas not properly reclaimed after mining. Mudslides could appear anywhere, anytime, a live, ongoing threat and for me, an immobilizing concern. It’s like I’m in an apocalyptic story, is what I thought, an insight not lost in the irony I was escaping a writers’ workshop. Those characters are always having to make split-second life-or-death decisions with no good information at all.

What should I do next? (This became my refrain.) What on earth do I do next.

I needed gas. I did know this, and there had been that station, high on a hill, I should work my way back until I found it. Thankfully this did not take long, and I had just re-holstered the nozzle when to my right I saw a man who, his tank full, was folding up his wallet. He stuffed it in his back jeans’ pocket as he stepped in the direction of the station’s convenience store.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said. It was an interruption that surprised me as much as it did him. He turned and I approached. “Are you from around here?” I smiled, having given this exchange zero consideration, and he looked at me quizzically. “I’ve just come from Hindman, and I’m trying to find a route out of the flood waters, and I’m not from Kentucky and I don’t have any idea which way to go.”

There was a moment that felt like an eternity as he stared and I stared and both of us waited. Is there a woman in his car? I remember wondering this. Does she even know there is a flood? Does anybody in this crowd realize there is a flood?

He nodded, big praises, he nodded. “Let’s step over here,” he said, and I followed. “Where is it you’re trying to get to?”

“North Carolina,” I said. “Near Asheville. But don’t worry about that. I don’t care how I get there, or how long it takes, I just want the safest route out of the flood. Once I get out, I’ll figure how to get home from there.”

Again he nodded; I think he may have looked at his phone.

We discussed a few details. Or rather, I’m sure I babbled on until decisively, confirmedly he said: “Hal Rogers Parkway. You’ll want the Hal Rogers Parkway to London. Then 75 South to Knoxville, and I-40 to Asheville, or wherever it is you’re going.” He looked up at me. There was not a smile; he was full-on earnest.

Knoxville, I thought, good lord but that seems a long way out of my way but then I had said it didn’t matter how long, how far, but only how safe.

“Hal Rogers Parkway,” I repeated. Again he nodded. “That’s not a two-lane road, is it? I don’t want a two-lane road. I’m worried about mudslides. I hear there are mudslides. Hal Rogers? You think Hal Rogers is the safest way to go?”

“I do,” he said. “I can’t speak to it specifically, of course, but I think you’ll be fine. A bit of water runoff, I’d say, but it’s a good road. You should be fine.”

I nodded. I was incredibly grateful. I was so nervous, still. “How do I get there?”

He pointed, and I turned to look and it was easy to see since we were high on a hill. “That intersection. See it there? At the second light, go left. That’s the Hal Rogers Parkway.”

Praises again, that sounded easy; I pointed and repeated nonetheless. “That traffic light right down there. Go through it. Go under the overpass. Then at the next light, take a left. And that will be the Hal Rogers Parkway.”

“Yes,” he said. “And be sure you get on the Parkway. There’s an old road this replaced, and you do NOT want to get on that one.”

Been there done that, I thought. “I’m so grateful to you,” I said. “Thank you so, so much.”

I buckled in. I pulled from the pump and pulled over to the side, where first I programmed Erin’s name to match her number. Then I disconnected and reconnected my phone to the car via Bluetooth. (They hate each other. This was a vital victory.) I organized myself for distraction-free driving, and I put my car in D.

11:25 a.m.  Over and over I confirmed: Hal Rogers Parkway, Hal Rogers Parkway, Hal Rogers Parkway. I had found it, I was on it, a few miles to go and I’d be in London. A few miles to go and I’d be out of danger. Then came the first marker, LONDON, 60 MILES. Ohgoodlord, sixty miles! How had I not asked this? How had I not prepared myself for another hour, probably more, in this awful rain? I looked in my rear view—at least there was a truck following, at least there was one other human with faith in the HRP.

Sixty miles, just drive. Sixty miles, and all will be well.

My phone rang. It was Kristi, the roommate I’d neither hugged nor told I was leaving. “Where are you? How are you? Is everything okay?”

“Oh, friend,” I said. I thought I might cry. “Where in heaven’s name are you?”

She was headed for Nashville; she explained her route but I couldn’t picture it. She’d left later than I, and she offered updates of other writer friends pulled from threads of last minute, frenzied conversations. In came another call. It was Erin, and so I took it.

I could hear the rain, the slapping of wipers. She’d gotten close to Whitesburg, but she’d had to turn back; there were quite a few from the workshop who’d had the same experience. But she was okay. She was returning to Hazard and then on to London; London then on home to Kingsport.

“I’m on the parkway now,” I offered. “It’s been fine so far.”

“It’s a good road,” she said.

It was a good road, thank heavens. It was a very, very good road.

12:40 p.m.  LONDON. There were cars. There were stores. There were people everywhere, going about their business. I put on my blinker and turned into a gas station not because I needed fuel but because I needed a breath. A moment. A beat. I parked. My hands gripped the wheel still, and I bowed my head and prayed. Then I lifted my eyes, my heart. It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m okay. I had made it to London, and it was all going to be okay.

AFTERWARD

Even all these months later, I do not discount the impact of my flood experience. It was confusing and terrifying, and the jitters come even now when I see the skies turn dark. But the devastation and loss suffered by so many in Eastern Kentucky in that massive 1000-year flood remains beyond my comprehension. I didn’t realize it while making that drive, but getting home with access to television and video and photographs—the horrors those good people faced in the dark of that horrific night, and in the heartbreaking days to come—it overwhelmed me and my fellow writers such that we gathered for a check-in Zoom that was filled with such raw emotion we ended with a meditation and a one-by-one exit blessing.

There are lessons, as well, and I’ll share a couple that have stayed with me. 

Climate change is our apocalypse. “Natural” disasters are coming with more and more regularity, and if we don’t do things to turn the proverbial tide, every one of us will, in time, face what those in Eastern Kentucky faced in that horrific flood, in one dark form or another. Being in the midst was terrifying, and it felt apocalyptic, and I hope to never experience that again. 

When you are confounded, and you don’t know what to do, focus on the next small decision. This is where my nature took me, and as I look back and consider, I certainly am grateful that instinct kicked in.

Oh, and this.

Carry a map. A printed map. When I left for college in 1978, my dad gave me a large, laminated Rand McNally road atlas with spreads for every state. He put the thing in my car and told me to never, ever travel without it. And I didn’t—until it was replaced with the mapping technology of a fancy new cell phone. No more. Within the week I’d bought myself a fine, new US/Canada/Mexico Road Atlas. It is Rand McNally, of course.