A Note About West Virginia

It's West Virginia Day and I'm feeling some hometown pride after an emotional week for our state.

Saturday, June 14th, parts of West Virginia experienced an insane amount of rain.

In a matter of 30 minutes we had 4 inches. A type of flash flood meteorologists predict only occur once every century.

“Hey are you guys ok?”

Myself and Kyle received tons of text like this and honestly, I didn’t understand why people were texting me over the fact that it was just raining really hard.

I saw the flash flood warnings, the severe thunderstorm alerts, etc. But that happens, doesn’t it? I’ve always loved a thunderstorm and I was in my happy little bubble at home vacuuming to the Hamilton soundtrack.

Then I saw it. My little bubble - popped. Ain’t that a lesson.

As of today, there have been 8 victims found as a result of the flooding in Ohio County, West Virginia.

Of those, a 3 year old and her mom.

I can’t stop thinking about them - about the victims. About how something so tragic can happen in just a matter of minutes. At the time, I thought the worst thing that would happen from all that rain were basements flooding.

I didn’t imagine a child being swept away from their mother’s arms.

Men and women of all ages at home one moment and down the street the next.

30 minutes.

That was all it took to usher out eight souls from my small city. A friendly space carved out of the northern panhandle valley and safely lined with tall trees that have surely witnessed Mother Nature’s wrath before.

I can’t stop thinking about the sweet little face of the little girl and her mother who were missing for over 24 hours before they were found.

One things for sure about West Virginia: we help each other. Volunteers ascended, donation drop sites immediately made, clean-up crews deployed. No ones quiet about this tragedy here. No one is saying “this didn’t affect me personally.” Because it did, it happened on our land, its always personal here.

I’m a transplant from Ohio, but no Ohio hate here. I’ve never witnessed community this way before.

It feels wrong to call it beautiful because there’s nothing beautiful about tragedy. It’s calamity. It’s also a reminder about what makes up so much of West Virginia’s veins: the need to fix and revive. You can trace it right back to 1863 when we told Virginia we had had enough of the Confederacy.

Each year I spend blending into this state I find myself appreciating the richness West Virginia has to offer. And while the wake of tragedy has my head spinning over questions that I’ll never be able to answer, I do know one thing for sure: West Virginia people take care each other.