Fairmont's National Guard unit travels to southern W.Va. to help with floods

Yahoo

23-02-2025

FAIRMONT — Two members of the 201st Field Artillery Regiment are doing their part to help with the recent flooding in the southern part of the state.
'It's slow going,' Master Sgt. Jonathan Broyles said. 'We're still coordinating with all the civilian sides. We're working with all kinds of law enforcement, DNR, they're pushing out relief packages, water supplies, cleaning supplies, to different locations throughout the county.'
Broyles said they're currently in McDowell County. Broyles was unsure how long it was going to take to clean up from the flooding. At one point, only 30% of the county had water, he said.
'Once we get an area that needs to be cleaned, we send out the teams,' Broyles said. 'We call the loader dump teams. They will go out to the site, they'll assess the situation. They'll start moving debris with skid steers and they'll work with the state — bring in Bobcats and whatnot to help load it up onto their dump trucks. They'll take the dumps to the local landfills and remove the debris.'
Several inches of rain piled onto pre-existing rain and snow, flooding Mingo and McDowell counties, and impacting a few others. So far the floods killed at least 17 people. Gov. Patrick Morrisey is waiting on approval from the federal government for a disaster declaration.
'We had a truly historic weather event last week,' Morrisey said at a press conference on Thursday. 'Parts of McDowell County received 4.72 inches of rain in less than 48 hours. I don't need to describe to people here the topography of West Virginia and what happens when all the water comes in, after all the snow and rain how wet the ground is, there's really no place for the water to go but to go up.'
Morrisey said the damage from the flood was more than the state could handle on its own. However, the floods occurred just as President Donald Trump has suggested the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the agency responsible for managing disaster relief funds, could 'go away.' Trump suggested he wants states to be responsible for their own disaster recovery.
Morrisey declined to answer a question at the press conference if he was concerned about the Trump administration's push to eliminate federal funding for programs states like West Virginia rely on. Instead, he said his focus was on ensure that in-state systems to deal with disasters are ready.
According to Mountain State Spotlight, Morrisey did not ask for any funding to the state's flood mitigation program when he submitted the state's annual budget request to the legislature. Lawmakers also haven't funded the program since its creation in 2023.
According to Conservation West Virginia, the state was hit by 380 flash floods between 2019 to 2023. It's a 26% increase over the previous five year period and a 51% increase for the five year span before that. Flash floods caused 24 deaths and over $98 million in property damage from 2019 to 2023.
Broyles said the current snow may not cause much of an impact to recovery efforts, but that if the rain that's in the forecast arrives, it'll slow down the relief efforts. However, he pledged to keep pushing through.
'We just need to keep praying and keep hoping that mother nature is on our side from now on,' Broyles said. 'And keep [water] to a minimum.'