Kassi Minton is surveying the damage to her home in the unincorporated area of Reed, Kentucky.
The studs are bare, and the floor is a patchwork of new and original decking. She uses her cane to point to a hole cut in the floor.
“They opened this to make sure there was no structural damage to the joists in the room below us, to make sure there was no standing water,” Minton said.
Beyond her front porch is a pile of sodden insulation, paneling, foam ceiling material and drywall among cabinets and major appliances.
In mid-April, the Ohio River crested at 43 feet in Henderson County. Residents in Northeast Henderson live in the floodplain, and that area was under a few feet of water. Several residents lost everything in the flooding.
Kassi and her household of seven are not alone in being displaced, losing most of their possessions. The range of water damage to homes is from water in the crawlspace, to the home needing to be razed.
Governor Andy Beshear made a Major Disaster Declaration. Locally, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has visited about 450 residents to talk about available services. This effort should conclude this week.
Spokesperson Kim Keblish said FEMA has been all over the Commonwealth this spring.
“Most recently, we had counties in the west and southeast of Kentucky that were impacted by the May 16 through 17th tornadoes and severe storms,” she said. “So all those folks in those designated counties were eligible for FEMA assistance.”
FEMA, along with Henderson Emergency Management, have been going door to door speaking with survivors. Kenny Garrett is the county EMA director.
“We're no stranger to floods,” he said. “This is a little bit worse than 1997, which I was here for 97 as well, and everything that's in between there. This was a little higher.”
Flood survivor Stephanie Knott’s family home is a few miles from Kassi’s. The town of Reed is situated between both the Ohio River and Green River.
“The Ohio comes from the north, the green comes from the south, and so they both kind of meet here, and when they do, especially when both do at the same time, it gets us pretty good,” she said.
Stephanie and husband Jamie have 10 children between them, and they’re also displaced.
Jamie said near the height of the flooding they had already evacuated. They visited the neighborhood and their home by boat.
“To see your house in three to four foot of water and knowing there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, it's hard to even put into words,” Jamie Said. “It's one of the worst feelings in the world.”
“Just knowing that everything that we've worked for was underwater … completely indescribable, like you said,” added Stephanie.
Inside, two of their older sons Colton, 17, and Jackson, 14 are shoveling and bagging insulation and other debris from their concrete floors. Like Kassi’s home, they’re down to bare studs. Previous weekends have been spent demolishing what the water damaged.
Jamie estimates rebuilding will cost $50,000 or more, but has a goal to be done this summer.
Garrett said overall, rebuilding will take a long time.
“In some cases, maybe homes have to be razed. It just depends on where you know that particular home is at. So this could be a two year process.”
Most Kentuckians aren’t required to have flood insurance. Some can’t even qualify for it. So rebuilding will be mainly on their own dime, little by little.
“We're just ‘10 pieces at a time.’ That's all we financially can do, 10 pieces of sheetrock at a time, 10 pieces of plywood at the time, just so we can try to get home,” Minton said. “That's all that's that's what we're doing. We're slowly piecing it back together.”
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