BOWLING CREEK, Ky. – As roaring floodwaters rose around her, Jessica Willett cut an electric cord off a vacuum cleaner and bound herself to her two children.

Willett, 34, heard loud pops and cracks as the force of the deluge fractured her manufactured home perched on Bowling Creek, a remote and steep-sided Kentucky holler. The floor bowed and water poured in. Her car parked outside was swept away.

Huddling with her 3-year-old son, Isaiah, and 11-year-old daughter, Nevaeh, in a bedroom, Willett felt the home shift off its foundation. She hoped the mattress might float. And she prayed that being tied up might keep her kids from being swept alone down a torrent filled with trees, metal sheeting and cars.

“I can at least try to save them,” she said. “If they find us, they’ll find us together.”

Willett and her family told USA TODAY she was lucky to survive a long and harrowing night during southeastern Kentucky’s historic flooding, which has killed at least 30 people, one of the deadliest such disasters to hit the state’s Appalachian region.

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Now, Willett and others who live along Bowling Creek are facing a daunting recovery, whose challenges are amplified by devastation spread among remote and difficult-to-access communities in what were already some of Appalachia’s most economically distressed counties.

For residents in places such as Bowling Creek, the floods pile another hardship on top of the loss of coal jobs and economic strain, declining populations, addiction and disproportionately high rates of poor health – all of which make the area particularly vulnerable.

“We’re so isolated, that makes it so hard to get down here,” Willett said. “Some of these folks got nothing. They had nothing to begin with. And now everything they do have is gone.”

Kentucky floods hit a place of community, challenges

On Saturday, after floodwaters had receded, residents loaded buzzing ATVs with water and gas for generators to traverse the single road torn by the floods along Bowling Creek, the common community name for those who live about 25 miles south of Jackson and 100 miles from Lexington.

Louis Turner, 31, was among those helping ferry supplies to isolated Breathitt County residents on the creek road, which winds for miles down a ridge.

Along the way was a washed-out bridge, overturned cars and appliances carried by the surge of water. Metal and debris wrapped around trees. One mobile home with a child’s hobby horse was visible through a missing wall. A Kentucky National Guard helicopter buzzed overhead with no obvious place to land.

But blocking the road was Willett’s cracked and battered home, which was pushed nearly 100 yards before snagging on a ledge. ATVs had to travel through the creek to get around it and anyone bringing aid to walk through the house before emerging on the other side of the road.

Willett and her fiance, Dustin Elam, 31, had moved into the home just last year. Willett was going to school to become a nurse while Elam commuted 80 miles to an industrial job.

Last Wednesday night, he was at work and she was alone with the kids when the rain began pouring down.

Around 11:30 p.m., she said, the water was at the door. But the rapids were too rough to wade to higher ground or to neighbors whose homes are higher up the hillside.

Realizing she was stuck, she tied her children to her with the vacuum cord and two bathrobe ties, she said. She told her kids to “kick your feet as hard as you can” if they wound up in the water.

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Though cell service is often spotty, she was able to reach her parents who lived in a nearby holler.

“Dad, I can’t get out,” her father, Jason Willett, 58, recalled her saying. But they couldn’t reach her because of high water and fallen trees.

As things grew dire, Jason Willett borrowed chainsaws and an ATV to reach his daughter, according to interviews with several family members. When her home halted its slide downstream, she escaped with the children through a window and met up with her father at a nearby home.

Elam, who had been at work, reached the road on foot by scrambling up steep hillsides.

“I kept praying and praying,” said her mother, Angie Willett. “We’re fortunate they survived.”

Not everyone in the county that night was so fortunate. On Saturday afternoon, police and coroner’s vehicles were seen stopped at Willett’s stuck house, and authorities set out on foot farther down the road. Breathitt County has recorded seven deaths as of Monday, according to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.

‘Help Please’: What’s next for Bowling Creek residents?

Leaning against an appliance that had been rescued from her broken home, Willett said the family was still trying to figure out how to move the house to ease passage for other residents.

Their future? That seemed a long way off.

Power was still out, along with piped water.  Beshear said Monday that some locations in the region could take months to restore water. But “FEMA folks are on the way” with cash and housing assistance, he said.

The couple said they believe their insurance doesn’t include flood damage. And they didn’t yet know what kind of aid they might get from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and when. On Saturday, little help had arrived in the holler, they said.

Paying for a new home out of pocket would be “hard,” Dustin Elam said. They started a GoFundMe page, wanting to rebuild, despite fears that another flood could strike again. They also lost belongings and a car.

“I’m terrified to be back down here, but this is my home, This is all I know,” Jessica Willett said.

Elsewhere in Bowling Creek, and in another holler nearby where someone had scrawled “Help Please” on their garage door, many were having the same discussions.

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Chris Turner, a general store owner serving Bowling Creek and pastor of the nearby Altro Church of God, had his church wall blasted open by the flood. He said he has flood insurance, unlike many in the area, but he feels “gun shy” about rebuilding on a creek.

Clothing, food, water, clothing and generators are immediate needs, he said. But for some, the future is uncertain. “There has been a lot of crying in our community,” he said.

“A lot of people in this community didn’t have a lot to begin with, money-wise. And they lost a big part of that. Some of them are going to have a hard time getting back what little they had to begin with. And some won’t never, I’m afraid, get back to what they had.”

While some consider moving for good, others are determined to rebuild, relying on community and family as they have for generations in this remote pocket of Appalachia.

Turner stayed up one night thinking how to address the community disaster when his church holds services again in a borrowed chapel. He said he thought of the story of Job in the Bible.

“Hard times make people stronger,” he said. “As a people in Eastern Kentucky, we’re survivors.”

Chris Kenning is a USA TODAY national reporter. He can be reached at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kentucky flooding survivor saved her two kids with a vacuum cord

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