On Friday, I went over with my work family to one of the many flood ravaged communities to try and pitch in what little we could. Seeing the devastation in person, even a week after the floods, was startling. Regardless of the number of photos you see, you aren’t prepared for vehicles lodged nose-first in riverbanks. You’re not prepared for new brick homes that have a straight line of vision into the back yard because they are completely gutted. You’re not prepared to see forlorn business owners standing in front of their shops looking completely hopeless, helpless and exhausted. You’re not prepared to see isolated homes dotting the landscape across the river as their only access bridge lies in ruin in the water below, or to see church pews discarded like matchsticks in a heap in the parking lot. It was a lot to take in…peoples’ lives laying in muddy piles next to the road, the smell of dirt and mud and mold and mildew. My emotions straddled between tears and anxiety as I gripped the steering wheel tighter to navigate across the mountain roads among a caravan of like-minded stranger-helpers who were all heading in the same direction for the same purpose. Car tags read Pennsylvania, New York, Tennessee, Indiana, and every county in Kentucky. Trucks hauled trailers full of supplies.

I got to the Missionary Baptist Church, and assembly lines were working together effortlessly to put boxes of items together. National Guard troops were on hand to unload the two entire U-Haul trucks filled to the brim with items from an Amazon Wish List. There were two locations in town where food, cleaning products, first aid supplies, diapers, boots, buckets, water, and other essentials were being given away.

The first visitor I saw, a man on a motorcycle who looked to be in his early 40’s, needed first aid supplies for injuries he sustained cleaning up his home. He asked for some gauze and some Neosporin. We tried to give him a first aid kit, but he didn’t want it. He just wanted a roll of gauze and a little bit of Neosporin. He had a cut on his foot and I insisted he take a box of waterproof bandaids. We tried to give him food, cleaning supplies, rags, etc. but he wouldn’t take it. He took only the barest minimum that he needed. Another older feller came by and needed some “wash powders” (laundry detergent for all you non-Appalachians). He got a small bottle and headed out. Again, we tried to foist supplies on him but he didn’t want to take anything another person may need. He finally admitted that he “could use some garbage bags” and took some from one of the many rolls.

While we were there, more people were giving supplies than were getting them, it seemed. One car stopped with pre-made lunches for the volunteers. Another person dropped off a load of fans, pillows, water, and hygiene items. The gentleman who picked up the Neosporin and the gauze came by to give us a $25 gas card for our trip home. There was someone going around administering tetanus shots to the volunteers and another giving out Liquid IV packets.

We later moved to the residence of an elderly lady and that’s where my heart truly broke- a lady with a lifetime of memories, all destroyed by the quick, ravishing floodwaters. It was absolutely overwhelming for me, a stranger and a bystander. I can’t even imagine how she felt as the brown water rose up and overtook nearly everything she owned. From the front porch, the strong smell of mold attacked your sinuses. To go in without a mask would be unwise. Flies, mosquitos, and gnats were taking advantage of the heat and wetness to reproduce and swarm. To make matters worse, there was no sun coming in the back rooms and your eyes had no light to contrast the black mud, making it very difficult to see.

Some of the stronger members of the team got the sofa and some bigger furniture out. Everything was so much heavier because of the sopping wet mud. We formed an assembly line to move the medium sized items out and pile outside. Then, everything else was just to be shoveled up and thrown into contractor bags. Wet books, magazines, clothes…You couldn’t fill a bag 1/4 of the way full or it would be too heavy to move. I could hear the owner say things like, “Can you get the kids’ drawings?” and “That was my husbands.” She told us she got out with a only the pair of pajamas she had on. As we waded through the mud and muck you could see clothes, medicine, pet food, underwear….decades of her family’s history and all of her present-day essentials…gone in a wave in the middle of the night.

She had no flood insurance and she’s too old to start over. I can’t imagine that she will be able to ever live in this house again as I’m sure it will probably wind up being condemned. She had a son and a daughter with her, so she’s fortunate in that regard. She was also fortunate to just have walked away at all. At least 3 dozen people didn’t have that luxury.

We did what we could do for her until it was beyond our scope. We needed more shovels and better lighting. The National Guard would be there shortly, so we stepped back. I was completely overwhelmed. We had an entire team and this was one house and we did so very little to help her. How many more homes have been damaged or destroyed? The cleanup process will take years.

I know this is incredibly long and thank you for making it this far because there is a point to all of this. I have encountered prejudice for as long as I can recall simply because of where my ancestors chose to settle. During my freshman year of college, I was told by a professor that I lived in the “third world of the United States.”  During my career, I’ve had colleagues whisper to one another before looking at me and saying, “Well, you know, they ARE in the heart of App-ah-lay-shuh!”  Or, they would talk to me with pity in their voice  and say things like, “it must be really hard to work in that area because of all of the…you know…challenges”. I’ve had to fight tooth and nail for opportunities because the powers-that-be thought we were too ignorant or poor or lazy or “insert-whatever-derogatory-word-you-want here” to run ‘x’ program. We have always had to do twice the work at twice the pace and twice the quality to prove ourselves. But we did! Time and time again we did, because we are Appalachian and that’s what Appalachian people do.

People have lost all humanity. Folks from “off” saying that the residents of Eastern Ky are getting what they voted for, as if Mother Nature specifically targeted folks who voted Mitch McConnell or Rand Paul. When I was there on Friday, I assure you there were many a conservative whose home was spared. Meanwhile, Whitesburg, one of the most progressive towns in Eastern Kentucky, was obliterated.  Natural disasters don’t have a political party and they don’t pick and choose where to land.

Other folks have asked “Why in the world do they live so close to the river in the first place?” These people obviously don’t know the topography of the region. You have mountains and you have very narrow valleys. When our ancestors settled here, they settled in the valleys where water and game were easily accessible and where the soil was rich. If there were miles and miles of flatland available, sure…we could live far enough away from rivers where we may not be affected. However, that’s not the way our region works. Look at a map. Take a geography class. Open a 5th grade world civ book, for crying out loud!

Then there are the “It’s just a bunch of rednecks in mobile homes” comments. This one may the worst of the worst. Manufactured homes are plentiful in the area because of the terrain, I suppose. They can be easily placed in the many hollers of Appalachia. It’s much easier to place a trailer or modular home in a snug little crevice between two mountains than it is to construct a home from scratch. My granny lived in a trailer. It was a 1973 model and I suspect she bought it brand new. She lived in my yard, right across from my house. I lived in that same trailer right after college. In fact, all three of my brothers lived in mobile homes at one point or another. Now, one brother is a nationally renowned photographer, one is an engineer and is absolutely the hardest working man I know, and one is retired from Toyota with a pretty good real estate side hustle. We all picked ourselves up by the bootstraps and did fairly well for ourselves. That’s what Appalachian people do. They are resourceful and resilient. They can make a terrific Sunday supper from what’s growing in the garden and they can help you fix a beat up Ford truck from leftover parts in the garage….because that’s just what they do.

I have seen so much ugliness come out in comments online when discussing this flood because it’s another opportunity for the collective prejudice and bigotry to shine through. After all, hillbilly prejudice is the last socially acceptable form of prejudice left. Think I’m wrong? Take any of the controversial headlines or political cartoons that you’ve seen recently about the floods and replace “Appalachian” with any class of oppressed people who have faced prejudice (elderly, Latino, Islamic, African American, LQBTQ+, etc.). Now, would that same cartoon or headline be published in the newspaper? Unequivocally, the answer is no. We would all be absolutely mortified if anyone had done such a thing, as we should be. But why (for the love of God someone please tell me why) can we say whatever the hell we want to about Appalachians? The Appalachian people I know work, care, love, give and protect harder than any other group of people that I know. They can listen to you call us “ignorant” and “hillbilly” and then when YOUR town is ravaged by wildfires and hurricanes, we will be the first to pray for you and send supplies your way so you don’t go without. We rise above and conquer. And after we conquer, we make a big ole pot of soup beans and serve it up with some chow-chow and fried potatoes with garden fresh tomatoes and onions and we invite all our friends and family to come feast from our bounty. We are rugged and independent, and after you knock us down we will stand back up and give you the shirt off our back if yours is tattered and torn….because that’s just who we are! And there is nobody else I would rather be.