Welch, West Virginia — The flood waters tore through McDowell County in West Virginia so fast in February that Rev. Brad Davis barely had time to grab his two cats before his house was swamped.
“The truest meaning of the word ‘apocalypse’ in that it pulled back the veil and just underscored all of the challenges that we are facing here as a community,” Davis told CBS News of the flooding, which left at least three people dead.
Four months later, one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the U.S. is still working to recover.
“I mean, it’s hard, it really is. It kind of tears you down mentally, physically,” said Shawn Rutherford, whose mountain home was heavily damaged by the flooding.
The city of Welch, the McDowell County seat, boomed during the boom days of coal, but it was already sliding when former President John F. Kennedy came here to campaign in 1960. The poverty has only continued as the coal industry cratered.
“We’ve been hemorrhaging population for the last 80 years,” Davis said.
The question they have been asking in McDowell County is how do they fully recover in a community where the poverty rate is so high, and where the population is leaving so quickly that even the local Walmart closed.
According to the U.S. census, the average life expectancy in McDowell County is 12 years less than the rest of the U.S. McDowell County also has the highest drug overdose rate in the U.S.
So far, approximately $12 million in federal relief has been provided to the area since the flooding, but the money doesn’t come close to covering all the cleanup and the rebuild.
It’s a brutal cycle. With the devastation and the insufficient aid comes a frustration with government. Less than half the registered voters in the county went to the polls in the November election.
“The people here feel like they have been forgotten,” Davis said. “Everyone has effectively forgotten about them and turned their backs on them.”
Scott MacFarlane is CBS News’ Justice correspondent. He has covered Washington for two decades, earning 20 Emmy and Edward R. Murrow awards. His reporting has resulted directly in the passage of five new laws.
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