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BUCKHANNON — The Upshur County Sheriff’s Office had helped conduct 50 to 60 rescues by Wednesday morning, a day after catastrophic flash flooding tore through the county, and deputies spent the morning checking on residents and searching for people still unaccounted for, Sheriff Mike Coffman told My Buckhannon.
No deaths had been confirmed in the county as of Wednesday morning, Coffman said, though deputies were continuing to check on people reported missing in remote areas and were preparing to reach them on foot or by air if necessary.
“Right now, we have not had any casualties confirmed. We are following up on a lead of four people unaccounted for, so we won’t know that for a little bit, and that’s in a very remote part of the county,” Coffman said Wednesday morning.
At an afternoon news conference, Gov. Patrick Morrisey said people remained unaccounted for across the flood zone in Upshur and Lewis counties and that officials were braced for the possibility of fatalities, even though none had been confirmed at that point.
“We are concerned about loss of life. We’re not here to make any specific announcements pertaining to that, but we are concerned about that,” Morrisey said.
With floodwaters receding but still high and many roads washed out, Coffman said the sheriff’s office had turned to welfare checks and to restoring communication, which had been knocked out across much of the county.
“We still have high water; roads are impassable, roads are washed out, so our goal today is to make sure roads are safe and passable, and we’re doing tons of welfare checks, family concerns, things like that, and we’re trying to get communications back up. We’ve had no communications at all today,” Coffman said. “As a matter of fact, right now I just led the FirstNet portable unit into Buckhannon, so they’re setting up a portable unit, so we have that cell phone communication.”
The department also ventured into a remote part of the county to look for the people who were unaccounted for.
“We’re sending a team in right now to a remote part of the county where we believe four people are unaccounted for. They may have to walk in on foot or fly into that area,” Coffman said. “We’re searching, following up on any information we have, and we’re gathering resources today.”
Help had poured in from across West Virginia. Thirteen deputies from other counties arrived in Upshur on Wednesday to assist with rescue and search efforts.
“We have 13 deputies coming from other parts of the state, from all over the state, from the Eastern Panhandle, Kanawha County, everywhere, so they’re going to be in the area working with us,” Coffman said. “There are numerous state police and DNR resources that we have available, and we’re sharing and working with Lewis County as well.”
Speaking later at the news conference alongside Morrisey, Coffman said crews would keep working “until we are sure that each resident is taken care of within the county,” and he thanked the mutual-aid teams that had traveled to Upshur from across the state.
“We have counties here from all over the state. We have them from Hampshire County to Kanawha County, Jackson County,” Coffman said. “They’re all here helping.”
Coffman said the department was also coordinating with the National Guard and the state Division of Highways.
“I also would like to commend the Department of Highways for working with us. It takes a lot to cover all the roads and signage, so they’ve been great,” Coffman said. “We have been working with the National Guard, including the Air Guard and state helicopters. We have tons of resources already on the ground.”
Roads remained blocked Wednesday morning, and crews had evacuated part of the city the night before.
“I know people were working on trying to get everyone evacuated, and they evacuated the whole North End last night,” Coffman said. “We worked on that, First through Fifth Street and Cleveland Avenue, so all those people are in a shelter. We’ve been working around the clock, all hands on deck, to get all this stuff accomplished.”
The county remained under a stay-in-place order, and Coffman asked residents to stay home if at all possible, saying sightseers were slowing the response.
“People being out and about just complicates things. People out just driving around looking at floodwaters or damage, it just really complicates things for us,” Coffman said. “As much as I know people like to do that, it makes our job 10 times harder.”
He said crews had even had to rescue people who were themselves trying to help others.
“We don’t need to rescue people going to rescue other people. It seems like that’s what we did all night last night,” Coffman said. “We want to encourage people to stay at home and not create more problems for themselves or the rescue workers. If they need anything, they can contact us, get ahold of us either through the 911 center or message us on Facebook.”
With phone service still spotty, Coffman encouraged residents to reach the sheriff’s office through Facebook if they could not get through by phone.
“People can send us a message on Facebook. We’re monitoring. The 911 center phone lines were down. They’ve been working very hard this morning on getting those back up, and to be honest with you, I don’t know the full status of that at this point,” Coffman said. “We were hit hard, but we’ll bounce back. Everybody’s been great to deal with, and we have all the resources we could possibly want at our fingertips.”
