05-04-2025
Eastern Kentucky braces for potential flooding during the calm in between storm
SAYLERSVILLE, Ky. — The longtime Little League coach watched the water slowly recede from the sports fields in Saylersville.
Water receding was a welcome sight for Matt Wireman, the coach-turned-county-judge executive in Magoffin County.
In 2019, just six weeks into the position, Wireman experienced his first disaster: a flood.
"We have navigated 10 or 11 disasters since," Wireman said, including three floods already this year.
Wireman, a resident of the county for more than 50 years — except for his time in the Army — cannot remember another time there has been this much rainfall. He'd just gotten off another Zoom call where Kentucky Emergency Management briefed officials statewide on potential weather threats.
For a few short hours on Saturday, he and the rest of Eastern Kentucky were able to soak in sunshine and 75-degree weather. Then the rain started to sprinkle.
As Wireman steered his black Ford F-150 south on Church Street, the Magoffin County Rescue Squad looked over its water rescue boat.
The crew had already been out multiple times on Friday to rescue people who drove into high water as flash flooding occurred across the county.
Just beyond the squad's station stood a brick and wood sign welcoming drivers into downtown Saylersville (pronounced SAL-yers-vil), proudly proclaiming the town the "Birthplace of the Licking River."
"The Licking starts on the southern tip of Magoffin County," Wireman said.
It's the Licking that could cause problems in Magoffin if the 1 to 3 inches of rain state officials warned Wireman about instead shifts east and turns into the threat of 3 to 5 inches.
"Five inches would be catastrophic for us," Wireman said.
But there's nothing he can immediately do besides warn people of flooding they've seen repeatedly over the last six years.
Largely, 'the cut' near the south edge of town that rerouted the river in the mid-1990s does its job and keeps water away from downtown. But in 2021, more than 100 homes were damaged, when the Licking River hit its third-highest crest at 20.36 feet since the cut-through was finished in 1997, according to the Saylersville Independent, the local newspaper.
And it's the Licking River that could cause problems in Pendleton County — where Falmouth and Butler residents were ordered to evacuate by 8 p.m. Saturday. The Licking River is expected to rise to 41.5 feet, per the National Water Prediction Service. Flood stage is 33 feet.
The small, impoverished community of Falmouth is no stranger to catastrophic flooding.
In March 1997, the river rose more than 24 feet above the flood stage, sending water rushing into town — killing five and flooding nearly 1,000 homes. The flood reached 50 feet at its height, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, breaking the record for the worst flood in the town's history.
The Licking River flows all the way north, where it meets the Ohio River in Cincinnati.
Wolfe and Powell County also faced flooding overnight as storms continued to come in waves, and the Red River spilled over roadways in Clay City, leaving Main Street impassable.
Around 2020, Wireman asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers what he could do to stop the town from flooding after a February 2019 flood filled downtown and forced a nursing home to evacuate.
"The Corps said they'd have to do a study and I could apply for a grant for the study," Wireman said.
That study alone, he said he was told, would cost between $700,000 and $900,000, and the grant would allow a 50/50 match.
"My general fund is $2.2 to 2.7 million," he said. "And they told me it'd be 10 to 15 years before the work was done."
Wireman slowed his truck as he drove over the river in another part of the county, near the U.S. Geological Survey's tracking box, which informs the national agency of the tributary's levels.
The muddy brown water had slowed from where he had originally started surveying spillover near the cut.
"The calm before the storm," he said as he began to accelerate, "for now."
Stephanie Kuzydym, an enterprise and investigative sports reporter, can be reached at skuzydym@ Follow her at @stephkuzy.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Eastern Kentucky watches weather as storm moves east
