Tina Sanders didn’t learn she needed to evacuate from the radio or TV.
"It happened so fast," she remembers. "Within an hour, there was water everywhere."
Tina was taking a Sunday nap before going to church that afternoon, when a ruckus outside awoke her. Seeing the water rising and her neighbors fleeing, Tina and her fiancée evacuated too. But they got stuck in rising water at the bottom of their road, near where Lick Creek runs through a tunnel under the train tracks. They got sucked into that culvert along with their vehicle. In the center of Dante, Tina’s partner pulled himself out. But Tina couldn’t.
"I was gripping onto the pavement trying to hold on and trying to get help but the current was so strong it sucked me back into the culvert."
She was pulled through a hole where the culvert running under the pavement had collapsed.
"My head hit the cement, cracked my head open. I don't know how long I was under there. I was beaten and banged and the Lord got me through it.
The emergency rescue team was waiting for Tina at the next bridge.
"I said, ‘Lord, go ahead and take me.’ Then they pulled me out right about that time. When I first came out I couldn't breathe."
Tina was taken to the hospital, and says she’s OK now.
"I came out without a broken bone and a few staples in my head. I had pneumonia from the water. It cleared up."
Twenty-one people lost their homes. Thankfully, there were no fatalities. The flood blindsided Tina, her neighbors, and emergency responders.
Flooding is the deadliest natural hazard in Southwest Virginia, and it’s intensifying because of climate change. A Climate Central analysis predicts that by 2050 Virginia could see a 19% increase in flood losses from the $856 million total in 2020. Southwest Virginia will face the brunt of those losses, along with the Chesapeake Bay and Norfolk areas.
In Russell County, the Dante flood occurred within the same year as Hurricane Helene, a February flood, and bad winter storms, each compounding the strain on resources. Russell County Administrator Lonzo Lester oversaw the response to them all.
"The county, we started, expanding our emergency services and our first response," Lester says, "not just into the search and rescue, but we implemented over 17 community centers."
A big, isolated summer storm like the one that caused the Dante flood is hard to predict even in the best of circumstances. Craig Ramseyer studies flood prediction at Virginia Tech.
We may know there's a 30% chance that somewhere in a local area may see a thunderstorm. But we're not going to know until real time that a flood’s ongoing," Ramseyer explains. "And so we rely heavily on local data. And in Appalachia, we have huge gaps in those data on the ground, particularly rain gauges that are reporting a resolution of like say an hour."
The radar model estimates just over 3 inches of rain in the Dante area that day, which Ramseyer says may not be accurate.
"We're in this unique space where we don't have great rain gauge data and the radar data we do get may have some errors that are quite large."
Solving this issue isn’t straightforward, because even when there is data, it isn’t all in the same place. Erin Rothman is co-founder and chief scientist of Merak Labs and has been working in neighboring Buchanan and Dickenson Counties. Her work is funded through a nonprofit called RISE Resilience Innovations.
"National Weather Service has some information, NOAA presents some information, USGS presents some information, and VDEM presents some information. But nobody consolidates everything in one spot," Rothman says, "which is mind-boggling."
Rothman and her team pull together a ton of data: topography and other spatial information, weather forecasts and radar models, flood risks, and water levels from stream gauges.
"It's kind of like a real-time control center for flooding for the region. Once we get a ping within the next 72 hours that we're supposed to expect something, we start tracking that forecast, and then notifying the county or emergency management, that there is a storm coming."
Once a local government has access to the Merak Labs model, they can use the data to make priorities and apply for grants.
"You can start seeing more clearly what gaps you have, installing more sensors."
Local governments can get their own rain gauges—Rothman recommends ones that send their data to satellites every 5 to 15 minutes. If those are too expensive, a rain gauge that is at least hourly connected to a nearby wireless connection will suffice. But in this variable terrain, you can’t monitor every watershed.
"It is not feasible to install 100 rain gauges in a county. So that's why we try to prioritize," Rothman says. "We have some areas that we know flood repeatedly, or more people are going to be impacted, or whatever the reasons are that the county identifies as a priority."
Even though each watershed can’t be monitored, more rain gauges still reduce the errors in radar models, which helps the whole region.
In Dante, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management has taken an important step toward filling the weather data gap in the region. In April, they installed a top-notch rain gauge at Arty Lee Campground, which is above the area that flooded.
When minutes matter, these rain gauges can help emergency responders get out the door faster. But for pop-up storms like the one in Dante, evacuating people earlier usually isn’t an option.
"That's when evacuation becomes dangerous, especially in these areas," Rothman says.
If you evacuate residents earlier, they may be on the roads when mudslides and floods happen.
"So we put together for Buchanan a little sheet that said, ‘If it rains, go out the back and up.’”
In other words, they reminded residents to evacuate the long way up the mountain roads, not down where the roads flood.
These reminders are important, because even with better forecasts, rescues in swiftly flowing water will continue to be necessary. During Hurricane Helene, the regional swift water rescue teams were needed in many places at once. During the Dante flood, some members of the regional swift water rescue team based in Bristol were still deployed to help with the central Texas floods. So, Russell and surrounding counties have developed their own local swift water rescue teams, each on call for the others.
Bryant Skeen, the chief deputy at the Russell County Sheriff’s Office, was with Lester and the other emergency responders during the Dante flood. Skeen is helping form the local swift water rescue team.
"We have personnel from Cleveland Life Saving Crew, St. Paul Fire Department, Russell County Emergency Management, Russell County Sheriff's Office, Dante Rescue Squad, Lebanon Life Saving Crew, Honaker Fire Department. And it's growing," Skeen says. "We're having training routinely. And we feel we'll be able to do great things to help the community."
By improving their weather data, bolstering emergency response, and sharing resources, counties in Southwest Virginia can efficiently prepare for future floods. In Dante, I’m Katie Burke.
This story is a collaboration with Climate Central and was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
