Floods cause at least 25 deaths in Kentucky | International

The last natural catastrophe that has hit the United States, a flood in Kentucky, bears, above the rest, a last name: Noble. Four children from that family died last Thursday, when the skies opened over the remote Appalachian region, one of the poorest, located in the western part of the State. The waters left behind the bodies of Maddison, Riley, Nevaeh and Chance Noble, eight, six, four and one year old. When their time came, they were with their parents, both in their twenties, who have survived. There are at least 25 victims in total, according to authorities. And the governor, Democrat Andy Beshear, fears that the figure will be even higher, as he explained to the media this Saturday. “Our goal remains to get as many people as possible to safety,” he said. This week’s flooding is unprecedented in the region.

Since Thursday, members of the National Guard from Kentucky, Tennessee (neighbor to the south) and West Virginia (to the west) have joined local police and Department of Fish and Wildlife agents to rescue survivors. , who, in many cases, saved their lives by climbing onto the roofs of their flimsy houses.

“It is very difficult at this time, with the magnitude of the destruction and the affected areas, to know how many people have disappeared,” said Governor Beshear, who had to face another natural tragedy last December, with the series of tornadoes that hit the western part of the State, with the town of Mayfield as the epicenter of a meteorological phenomenon as devastating as it is historical. So, Beshear – one of the youngest governors in the United States, who took the reins of the catastrophe, in part, due to a personal connection (his family comes from Dawson Springs, one of the areas that was most devastated by the wind) – For several days, it offered figures of victims above the 77 that were finally reported.

The rescue efforts are made difficult by the fact that in large areas of the affected areas, the mobile phone service and electricity are interrupted. “The water is still high in many counties,” Beshear warned in an interview with CNN.

The day before the Kentucky rains, an unprecedented storm hit St. Louis, Missouri, killing one person. Both events, which climatologists classify as extraordinary (since they are only things that happen every thousand years, according to The Washington Post), they were caused by the same atmospheric configuration, and exemplify the kind of unprecedented events that meteorologists will have to face more often given the speed with which global warming is advancing.

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