After 30 years of living in the same house on Garrison Avenue, Rhonda and Jerry Walker are planning to leave their Charleston home following Sunday’s flash flooding.

The couple suffered two previous flooding events, including losing everything to storms and flooding in April 2024. After that, they replaced the home’s floors and everything underneath them, she said.  

“(Flooding) did $35,000 worth of damage last time,” Rhonda Walker said. 

More than 4 inches of rain fell in Charleston, West Virginia, on Sunday, again flooding the Walkers’ home and those of several of their neighbors. This time, the Walkers plan to put what they can salvage into storage while they figure out next steps. 

“It may be a blessing in disguise — that’s what my friend said,” Rhonda Walker said. “It might be. Because before we just kept fixing up and picking up, and we can’t do it this time.”

On Tuesday, Walker and four of her friends were going through household items determining what could be saved and what to throw away. 

The Red Cross will put the couple up in a hotel for two nights. After that, though, they’re not sure where they’ll end up.

Tears filled the woman’s eyes as she talked about the uncertainty of their future.

“I think I would be better if I just knew what the next step (is),” she said. “If I had a secure place, and I knew, you know, where we were going.”

Sunday’s flooding also hit the Cross Lanes and Cabin Creek areas in Kanawha County, and Fayette County, where a woman died after being swept away in the floodwaters.

Gabe Wawrin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Charleston office, said the severe weekend storms in the area were part of a “convective complex.” Essentially, several thunderstorms joined together on a larger scale, persisting for hours or more and hitting harder than individual thunderstorms would, per the NWS. 

That storm system, Wawrin said, had been moving in a ridge across the central part of the country. As disturbances moved along it, they hit the Charleston area hard. Fueling the storms, he said, was the hot, humid weather that can make downpours generally hit harder, with more precipitation.

“So we had the severe storm potential. Topped with the warm and humid air, you get heavy rain potential, and we’ve been locked into that pattern for the last week to two weeks,” Wawrin said. “That’s led to these, at times frequent, convective complexes.”

Wawrin said the most recent storms were the latest in what has been an already especially wet August in the region. To date this month, he said, the area surrounding Charleston has received about 10.31 inches of rain. The record for monthly rainfall in August for the area stands at 10.54 inches.

“June and July, they were relatively normal, but yes this has been an extremely wet August for the Charleston area,” Wawrin said. “It stands to be fairly likely we could break that record, we’re already very close to breaking it and have 13 days to go in the month.”

Flooding also damaged Angie Means’ Charleston home on Sunday. Means, who also lives on Garrison Avenue, was midway through renovating the house with hopes of selling it.

“I was two rooms away from getting it on the market,” she said. “I had walls to wash in two rooms and it (was) done. Done.”

Flash floods rose about 3 inches in the home, taking out the gas line, pushing through the heating vents and into the floor. 

On Tuesday, she and her husband mopped and cleaned up what mud they could reach.

Means has owned the house for more than 20 years. In that time, she said, she’s not seen the flooding as severe as it was Sunday.  

“It’s flooded, but never like this,” she said. “The worst was … probably late ’80s or early ’90s.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, more than a thousand Appalachian Power customers in the Kanawha Valley were still without power, according to the company’s outage map. Several of those outages — near Davis Creek, off Rutledge Road and throughout eastern Kanawha County — were due to downed trees. Power was anticipated to return for most customers by Tuesday evening, per the company. 

Kanawha County Metro 911 said more than 2,100 emergency calls were made to its dispatch center between 8 a.m. on Sunday and midnight that night. Emergency medical services were dispatched for more than 290 calls, while fire departments were sent out for at least 175 and police responded to more than 390.

Kanawha County emergency responders performed more than 60 water rescues throughout Sunday as high water rushed in and stranded motorists along with others. More than 40 collisions were reported on roadways throughout the day, and dispatchers saw over 150 calls for reports of high water, downed trees, gas leaks, compromised utility lines and more.

And while the Kanawha Valley was hit especially hard with weekend floods, northern parts of the state were as well.

In Harrison County, officials told news outlets that “everywhere got hammered.” Harrison County Schools were supposed to start Tuesday, but due to the widespread flooding, the district deferred a day to Wednesday. County officials told WV News on Monday that Clarksburg, Anmoore, Salem and Reynoldsville sustained damage from the flooding. 

No injuries were reported, they said, but there were numerous rescues performed for stranded motorists. Several crews were also responding to homes where the power needed to be cut due to encroaching water in basements and the surrounding area.

Gov. Patrick Morrisey on Tuesday issued a statewide state of emergency in response to the storms and flooding from Sunday through Tuesday. 

“West Virginians have been hit by another round of severe weather at a time when many communities are still recovering from last month’s storms,” Morrisey said in a news release. “This declaration gives our emergency responders, state agencies and local officials the flexibility they need to move quickly, get resources where they are needed and help communities recover from the damage.”

Cleanup was still going on Tuesday at the Women’s Health Center on Washington Street in Charleston, where Clinic Director Danielle Maness said flash floods rose 2 feet on the building’s external wall, breaching the flood prevention gates it had installed. 

Flooding happens “consistently” where the clinic sits at the corner of Greendale and Washington Street West, including in April 2024 and last week during heavy rains, she said. 

“This just happens to be an area that does not drain well,” Maness said. “And when there’s a lot of water coming down the Greendale hill, the drains on Greendale and Washington get clogged and the water just stays still. So I know it’s not just a problem for us; it’s a problem for a lot of other low-lying places on the West Side. 

“And I just want to be very mindful — we’re a business, but this impacted individuals in the community,” she said. “And this impacted people’s homes, and so we were actually, comparable to other people throughout the state, we were relatively lucky.”

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