More Rain Due as Residents Assess Flood Damage

With even more rain in the forecast, Appalachian residents whose homes were hit by some of the worst flooding in 25 years returned on Tuesday to find floors caked with mud and garbage strewn in the trees.

“I just screamed,” Kimberly Hammonds said of finding the fishy-smelling muck up to a foot thick on her carpets, sofas, dining room tables and even cabinet tops. “That didn’t help, but it didn’t hurt anything either.”

Rain let up enough to let the flood waters recede and residents return after as much as 8 inches of rain over two days fell in the hills of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.

The storm was blamed for seven deaths and left hundreds of homes damaged or destroyed, and rivers hovering menacingly near their banks.

Forecasters said more was on the way today, with another storm expected to deliver 2 inches of rain to a region already soaked.

“Any shower could produce flooding pretty quickly because it’s all runoff now,” said National Weather Service forecaster Darrell Massie.

In the string of tiny towns that fill the hollows along eastern Kentucky’s swollen Cumberland, Kentucky and Licking rivers, Tuesday was a day of misery.

Faye Scott, 68, said she lost everything in her Dayhoit home. Relatives and neighbors used water hoses and wheelbarrows to clean or haul away her soggy belongings.

“It’s totally destroyed me,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “There’s so many memories that you just can’t salvage.”

With every step Jody Ball took, the carpeting under her feet squished in her mother’s mobile home.

“It can’t be saved,” she said. “There’s nothing can be done to get the smell out.”

More than 300 homes were damaged or destroyed in eastern Kentucky.

In southwestern Virginia, about 1,000 evacuated residents came home to find the damage inflicted by a 10-foot wall of water that engulfed cars and carried off sofas.

“It just happened all at once,” said Saltville police Sgt. Greg Hogston. “It was just like--bam! This is the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Hogston said a flood has not caused so much damage in the Smyth County town of about 2,200 since 1957.

In Tennessee, schools were closed a second day in Sevier County in the Great Smoky Mountains because of flooding. A 40-foot section of road was destroyed by a mudslide on Bluff Mountain near Pigeon Forge.

All the reported deaths were in Tennessee, including those of two people who drowned crossing swollen creeks and four people who died in rain-related traffic accidents.