This is an alarming image from Central Appalachia, where at least 25 people have been killed in the flooding. When I turned in last night the news reports were saying that at least half of those who have been killed are children.
What does this image recall for you?
A terrible storm hit the year that I was born. My uncles had some feed corn and put it out for the deer, but people were so hungry in their coal patch that they gathered the corn for themselves. A car that was swept down the road in the flood stayed on the berm for more than a decade, a silent reminder that a person had died there and a rusting monument to destruction.
There was the Buffalo Creek Flood in West Virginia in 1972. That happened when three Pittston Coal Company dams burst and over 30 feet of water hit 16 coal towns. They say that 125 people died in that flood, and that over 1100 people were injured, but I believe that the numbers had to have been much higher.
There was Tropical Storm Katrina that hit the Bahamas, the U.S. Gulf Coast and Mexico's Gulf Coast in 2005. That took over 1800 lives. I felt my country shatter then. Hurricane Ida, 2021, took the lives of at least 107 people.
I once did a body search and helped with rebuilding after a flood in Appalachia in the 1980s. You don't want to find bodies, but you also do want to because you know that that is someone's family member and that the dead person deserves a funeral and their family deserves some closure.
Some good person or people have the job of compiling the statistics of lives lost and property destroyed with each of these disasters, I imagine. It must be a very long list. It is not to our credit that when we hear of a disaster far away we so often shrug our shoulders or shake our head or say a prayer and move on.
Like I said, I felt my country shatter with Katrina. Tens of thousands of people and entire regions were abandoned. That happened, and we own that as a society.
The Biden administration and Kentucky's Governor Andy Beshear have been quick to promise help to Kentucky and Central Appalachia, and I'm glad for that. I know that there are people who have risked their lives to help others, and the generosity and solidarity of people in the region in helping one another is always extraordinary.
But I have to ask myself and others why these storms and the fires and the excessive heat are here and getting worse.
I know that Matthew 5:44-45 says "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust." But doesn't it sometimes seem that the order of things is being turned upside down and that the sun is shining and the rain is falling more on the just and good people, or the folks who are poor and defenseless, while there are people in power who can take joyrides into outer space and live in excess?
An optimist may say that the picture above shows America rising triumphantly out of trouble. Another person might say that with every tragedy---every environmental disaster, every shooting, every person made houseless, every person who can't get a decent and living wage or healthcare or help with the kids or reproductive or racial justice---this country sinks a little deeper.
I have a different kind of optimism, I suppose.
We won't get out of this mess by putting loving our enemies first on our agenda. Before that can happen the people who are most affected by these disasters have to discover their collective strength and solidarity and lead fully honest and authentic lives with one another. The system that we live in cannot handle our collective power, our solidarity, and our honesty. Once we're clear on that and have put away this bad business of exploitation, oppression, and environmental destruction "love" and "enemies" will look much different then they do now and other possibilities will open up.
"Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one." (Matthew 5:37) means right now that we have to name what is killing us and refuse to cooperate with a system that puts profits before people.
I believe that we can do this. I believe that these disasters test us and show us where we need to do some tuning up.
For right now, today, I'm asking that you go to the Appalshop Resources Page and figure out how you can be the most help to the people in Central Appalachia who have been hit by the floods. Please make a donation or see if you can help some other way.
https://appalshop.org/news/appalachian-flood-support-resources
The Appalachian Apparel Company is doing a fundraiser. Go here to check on them.
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