Best For:
Literature enthusiasts drawn to deeply personal stories about small town families facing extraordinary circumstances, individuals active in mutual aid or community-led disaster relief, readers interested in the intimate human stories that exist behind major disasters, & people looking for meaningful ways to support a family rebuild their lives after sudden loss.
The Essence:
Read Time: ⌚️ 7 minutes | Weight: 🚨Heavy | Mood: 🌧️ Somber, intimate, & resilient|
The Vault:
- A home filled with almost thirty years of love & family history swallowed by more than five feet of floodwater.
- Two people who built their golden years in Crooksville, Ohio, & watched two generations of family grow here.
- A Kentucky farmer, his lifetime of work, & the home that held the memories of his family.
- The devastating uncertainty of a beloved dog that went missing during the flooding.
- What remains after the water recedes? Find out how individuals can help so they can begin again.
When the Water Came Up:
Flood waters can turn a familiar place into something almost unrecognizable in a matter of hours if not minutes. Water is insanely dense if you didn’t know. When you consider the constant movement of flood waters you’ll find that ankle-deep water can sweep you off your feet, and knee-deep water can carry your car away you see the force it brings when it rises.
For these small town grandparents, the flooding did far more than damage their family home and fracture their security. When the water started rising they probably figured this would be a flood like the ones they typically get; they were unaware of the over 5 feet of water that would soon rob them of many things.
This was the same house they purchased for their golden years, the same community where they chose to spend the best years of their lives, and the same area where their family continues to put down roots. Their grandchildren were raised here and now their great-grandchildren stomp the same yards. Decades of their family history were held in this house.
This loss they are faced with is a part of a much larger story unfolding across the region as communities deal with flooded homes, evacuations, rescues, destruction, and the difficult days that follow natural disasters. Every flooded street holds people trying to figure out what comes next.
For this family, that realization is especially painful. They are facing the loss and destruction of the place that held just shy of thirty years of their lives, while also dealing with the heartbreaking loss of their beloved senior dog.
Let’s head back to the storm that caused the water to rise, when a familiar kind of flooding became something far more devastating.
The Derecho-
Where the Storm Went:
On August 11th, 2026, this system covered an enormous stretch of the country, starting in eastern Iowa before working its way across Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan before making its way into Ohio. After leaving Ohio the storm cell continued through Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, the Carolinas, and ended up reaching as far south as Georgia. Though the derecho classification applies only to the part of this system that went through Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio.
This wasn’t just your average end of summer thunderstorm. It was part of a massive line of storms which had already traveled hundreds of miles and would still travel hundreds more.
The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center has preliminarily classified the storm system as a derecho. To be classified a derecho a storm must:
- have a wind damage path of at least 240 miles
- feature wind gusts of at least 58 mph along most of its length
- include several concentrated clusters of 75 mph or greater gusts
The storms that ripped through Ohio were a long-lived, organized line of thunderstorms that produced widespread, destructive straight-line winds. These storms differ from tornados, which concentrate their strongest winds into a relatively narrow path. This is why a derecho can keep pushing forward for hundreds of miles, leaving damage spread across a much larger area.
This cell was not gentle along the way, producing wind gusts that reached 97 to 99 mph in parts of the Midwest. Ohio even recorded an 82-mph gust in Columbus. Trees came down, telephone poles snapped in half, and power lines tangled across roads and neighborhoods. At the height of the storm, more than 800,000 customers across the affected region were without electricity, including more than 200,000 in Ohio.
Wind wasn’t the only thing this storm brought with it that caused concern.
As the system pushed into Ohio, it unloaded the same kind of torrential rainfall it had already gifted Indiana and Iowa. Southeastern Ohio was already in a bad position with ground conditions saturated, waterways rising, and rainfall coming faster than the land or drainage systems could handle.
When the water started moving, Perry County, Ohio, was hit particularly hard. Flash flood emergencies were issued as water rapidly covered roads, entered properties, and almost submerged others.
State of Emergency:
Emergency crews began conducting water rescues as people became trapped in homes, businesses, and vehicles. The roads that people used to get around their communities were suddenly engulfed in rushing water, making an already dangerous situation even harder for rescuers to navigate.
Crooksville was one of the small Ohio villages caught in the thick of it. The area saw floodwater rise so rapidly that many people were forced to evacuate. A shelter that opened for people who could no longer safely in their homes. Nearby communities, including Roseville, were also dealing with the same rapidly changing conditions.
The flooding became serious enough that Governor Mike DeWine declared a state of emergency for Perry and Muskingum counties and deployed the Ohio National Guard to assist with searches, rescues, and evacuations.
This storm not only knocked out power, ripped down trees, and produced destructive winds, it also spawned tornadoes, and dumped enormous amounts of rain across its path.
One of the worst parts of this storm was what was rising from the ground or out of the creek beds, and would eventually rob families of their homes, vehicles, and pets.
Twenty-Six Years of Sunshine:
Roughly twenty-six years ago, the established couple came to Crooksville with the a small dream and lot of hope. Their goal was one many people share, after a lifetime of working the land: to spend their golden years loving the family that grew from their love.
They chose Crooksville, Ohio for the peace and quiet. They were able to see their grandchildren grow up on this land, and now great-grandchildren, giving the family even more reasons to stay connected to the place they had chosen all those years ago.
Their home became a cedar-chest that held all of it. A home where ordinary days became family memories; holidays, birthdays, cookouts, arguments, laughter, quiet mornings, and all the little moments that don’t seem important until they’re torn apart in front of you.
There were things in that house that wouldn’t mean much to a stranger walking through. Photographs holding children now grown and family no longer here, tucked away photo albums and saved mementos from far off places holding the memories as if they happened yesterday. The ordinary objects that quietly accumulate when a house becomes a home.
Twenty-six years is a long time to stay put, but that happens when you put down roots.
In that many years a house will become familiar to you in ways you don’t consciously notice anymore. You know which door sticks, where the floor creaks, what handle wiggles, and the way your family looked while filling the rooms over the years. You stop thinking about the walls as walls, as they become one of the main scenes in your life.
Beyond the house itself was the community they had spent almost three decades becoming part of. Where they came with a plan and a goal; they succeeded just to watch it all but wash away.
They did not just live in Crooksville for twenty-six years, they built their life, nurtured their roots, and watched those roots grow their family tree.
In a matter of hours, floodwater tore through everything they spent their life building.
Twenty-six years of building a life cannot be replaced simply by finding another house. A new roof can be put over someone’s head. Walls can be rebuilt. Furniture can be replaced. But the years that happened inside those walls, the history attached to the place, and the feeling of having finally put down roots somewhere permanent are not things you can simply buy back.
And that is what makes the aftermath of this flood about far more than property damage.
How You Help:
The family has an established go fund me set up and any funds raised will help them begin rebuilding their home. Renovations will include things like redoing the flooring and repairing the duct work that was destroyed by the historic flooding.
The couple doesn’t have home insurance and simply do not have the financial means to cover these major repairs on their own. These flood waters have devastated their family, and they do not know where to go from here.
Their grandchildren are asking for community support because their grandparents are the kind of people who have spent their whole lives helping others. They are caring, supportive neighbors who would give the shirt off their back to someone in need. So please if you are able to give, share, or keep them in your thoughts, it would mean so much to their family.
Any support will help them take the first steps toward rebuilding their home and their lives.
