Thousands of West Virginia homes damaged

Disaster News Network: West Virginia has worked for many years to mitigate flood damage by moving houses and mobile homes out of low-lying areas. But when water started racing off the mountains in the southern part of the early Saturday morning, May 10, some of the structures that were moved upland, proved vulnerable to the heavy rains.

Robert Jelacic, a spokesman for the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said the dense, southern mountains turned into dangerous waterslides because none of the rain could be absorbed into the ground. “The ground is pretty much saturated because we’ve has so much rain during the last couple of weeks,” he said.

And during a 24-hour period, four inches of rain fell in here in Mingo County, the hardest hit county, while two and half to three inches of rain fell elsewhere. Jelacic said 2,500 to 3,500 structures were damaged by the flooding. No injuries or deaths have been reported. A handful of shelters were opened, but Jelacic said almost no one used them and sought help from families or friends….

Matewan Historic District, a National Historic Landmark, was the site of the Battle of Matewan in May 1920 during a coal miners' strike. Shot by FloNight (Sydney Poore) and Russell Poore, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2