The Valley Grove Flood - Season 3 - Episode 1

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Psychobabbel dash Me. I'm your host, d'anielle Minch
with Mayor mar Week.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hi.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Everyone. Before we start season three.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Episode one, we want to put out a disclaimer that
this episode may be triggering for some people and is
not meant to replace any sort of mental health therapy.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
So we took a long break, long like we usually
take the summer off, but it kind of extended into October. Wow.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Yeah, so a long busy. Well, Danielle has about one
hundred irons of the fire. Yeah, I'm always out of
well the state, well, yeah, or another. But we're back.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
We're back, right, We're back, and it's better, right, and
we're going.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
To try something a little different this season.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Right, Yeah, just kind of try to banter a little
bit more and cover more topic that affect mental health
as opposed to just you know, reviewing doing it its statistics,
because we know we love those statistics.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Well, I have some for today, so already I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
So today's episode, we're going to talk about the devastating
flood that happened in Valley.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Grove in June. It was June fourteenth, five, Yeah, and
the rain came down.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
It fell two point five to four inches within thirty minutes.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
So yeah, I read one place they said five inches
and forty five minutes.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
So Valley Grove is in West Virginia and it's a
little town, Valley Grove, Tidelphia, and I read somewhere. I
think it's a population of six hundred and sixty people.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
That's it. Yeah, but it was devastating, devastating.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Nine people lost their lives, yeah, including a small child
right at.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Three year old. Yeah, and one woman.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
I mean, if you don't know the geography, there's a
lot of small streams and you know, creeks, and then
we have the Ohio River here and this poor woman
body was found.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
She floated all the way down the creek into the Ohio.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yes, just so sad, so sad, so devastating. There was
there so I drive through there. So I live in
Valley Grove, but I live up.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
On a hill, way up on a hill.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
There is like houses that were there that are no
longer there. This is how forceful and powerful this water was.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
People said it was like a not a tsunami, well
kind of like a sami wave coming through like they
were watching it. Just this wave of water carrying away
cars and oh, garages, containers.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
So they found where was it? I wrote it down
somewhere they found I don't know how many cars in
the river.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Seventy five vehicles were pulled from two creeks up and
they said that over twenty five hundred people lost their power.
Twelve roads and three bridges were closed. And the thing
is that there's still there's still.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Still trying to reach there is. I saw a big container.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
The other day in the in the in the creek.
They yeah, they still haven't pulled everything out. There's a
lot of debris and stuff.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Because I drive through there and you can see that
people are rebuilding.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
But.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
It's gonna be yeah, and a lot of people lost
like everything, their businesses, their homes.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
They yes, and they don't have And the thing is, you.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Were talking about this before we started, like with the
insurance companies and FEMA. They don't have the money to
do it, and the money's not still trained down yet.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
No, No, it's not so. On June nineteenth, I was
off site. We got a couple of people and we
went and volunteered and we went to the Valley Grove
fire station. But I'll tell you what mehrmar. This community
came together. People were bringing like I got some stuff
to donate, but not the near capacity of people were

(04:05):
bringing like moving trucks, gloves, like boots, like every possible
hygiene product you can think of, wipes and shovels, and
I mean it just came in droves and then they
had to like organize it and you know, unload the trucks.
There was football teams there, there was a softball team there.

(04:25):
There were so many people the area. Like I don't
don't want to name one person because I don't want
to leave anybody out, but all the food places in
the valley had dropped off breakfast, lunch, and dinner for
the volunteers. For the people that were coming to get
get supplies for their homes. They were offering we work

(04:46):
the tent where they offered the tetanus and hepe shots.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
They yeah, that's the people don't realize, like, not only
is it the water, but so the the the sewage dranger,
the sewage drains what are they called.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
You know the water drains where the water goes, Yes, yeah,
so they get filled up with debris and so yeah,
all that mud comes in and I know that they've
been changing because before the sewage and the water drains.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Were won, so they've been changing that, like in downtown,
but some of those places I'm not sure about.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
In Valley Grove, there's still like one system.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, so when all that shit comes up, it's literally
human yeah ship.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Well, I don't know if you remember.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
I was actually away in Nashville, but like it was
a few days or a week or so later we
got hit again with another huge rain. And my daughter
lives in Elm Grove, and that's what happened. The sewage system.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
She doesn't It wasn't a creek or a creek or
anything like that. It was just like water that just
came up.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Right, because all this stuff, especially like now with all
the because today they're saying there might be of your
weather too, God forbid. But all that stuff gets stuck all.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
The limbs, and I mean, you know, it's just cool.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
She lost everything in her garage, I mean in her basement.
So yeah, and some it was sad because she was
laying stuff out like that.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
She had memories of my dad and stuff.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
But just think of losing like your whole house, seeing
like left away everything.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah, you own and I mean you can rebuild. But yeah,
and then you know, people say, well, why don't they
just move, Well, it's not just that, it's not that
doesn't usually happen.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
There's like the river floods, but nothing like this. I
don't think it's happened since I was.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
A little girl. Yeah, they even had the National Guard
was in. Yeah, yeah too.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
So and I had talked to some people and they
were talking about like how people came in and help him,
like do drywall and take all the mud out.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
But I was telling merrimour that some of.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
The insurance companies said, don't touch it, so they didn't
have these vallun tears help. But their house still sits.
And he also said to a couple of his neighbors,
don't want to come back because the sight of rain
or hearing rain or anything like that causes them to
relive the trauma of.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah, and that's the main.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Reason why we're talking about this, because we did touch
on PTSD in the past. But I think that it's
so important because this is such a devastating event that
is traumatic for people. People are like literally jumping on
their trailers.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah that it's happening.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
I mean this is in our little town that's liable,
which everyone doesn't believe in that.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
I'm not going to get into that.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
With global warming, the weather and these storm systems and
hurricanes and tornades are just getting worse. I mean, you know,
Asheville was that last year, and Texas and California the fires.
I mean, it's affecting everyone. So yeah, So I mean
we wanted to talk a little bit about PTSD.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yes, definitely.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
So I think we've, like Danielle said, we touched on
this before. So PTFD basically is when you're exposed to
something actual or threatened by death, injury, or sexual violence.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
And it can be through like.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Direct exposure or witnessing the trauma, learning that the trauma occurred,
an indirect exposure to unpleasant aspects of the trauma. So
all these people, I mean aren't going to get PTSD,
but they affect it, you know, they effectively experienced a
traumatic event.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah right, and definitely can have some acute symptoms of it.
And symptoms are unwanted distress of the memories over and
over of the traumatic event. And like we said, this
is such a traumatic event, releasing the reliving the event,
so flashback of dreams.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah, becoming upset when faced with the reminders of the trauma.
Like you said that that person doesn't like the sound
of rain, and yeah, rains here all the time.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yes, it does severe emotional distress or physical reaction to
something reminding them.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Of the event.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
It could be what do we talk about before, a smell,
a sound, you.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Know in this case, you know, maybe just even driving
by the site, you know, or seeing a river or
you know, anything like that. Any trauma or scene on TV.
You know, this happening somewhere else brings it all back.
And it's not only psychological. People have physical symptoms.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
So you know, they have their heart rain increases, if
you can sweaty, their blood pressure goes up. It's almost
it can induce almost a panic like state. You know.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
It's a fight or flight response for some of these people, right, Yes,
they can become irritable, rest of hyper vigilant increase, uh
startle response you or they hear rain and they automatically
flip out and think something terrible is going to happen.

(10:12):
They have trouble sleeping, and it really can cause impairment
in your daily life.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah, right, and complications.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
They say it like that complications but can lead to depression, anxiety,
issues with drug or app alcohol, and a tempting of
suicide too, it says, And just remember if you have
any thoughts of harm to yourself or anyone else, Nine
to eight eight is the suicide hotline.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
You just text that number. Is that stoe up and running? Yeah?
I think it is okay, all right, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
I'm sorry, it's not good to your near community center er.
And if the symptoms are lasting more than a month,
or you know, you find that they're really affecting you, then.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
You know you really should get some sort of help therapy,
psycho therapy, which would.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Be your exposure I don't know, exposure therapy.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
When we talked over that, that new therapy that they have,
it's really good for that E M.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
D R Imovements desensitization reprocessing, which we went over all
of this.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
If you guys really want more information on that.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
And I don't remember what Steven was god, we do
have it on our website.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
And the thing is too, like Daniel said, so people
were still waiting like they just had.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
I read in the paper that the city council just
had a meeting last week figuring out how to still
get some of the debris out of the creeks because
FEMA pays for seventy five percent of it the cleanup,
and then it's the state's responsibility to pay the other
twenty five percent.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
And they're so they're like, where are we getting the money?

Speaker 2 (11:54):
He came because if you drive by, there's still, you know,
evidence of what happened and.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Still stuff in the creeks.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
So, yeah, it's supposed to be a really wet winter
and the chances that this may happen again are pretty high.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
Yeah, And I remember that day that it happened.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
I had my friends of my best friend and her
husband and.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
Her daughter was there.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Wasn't merrimok, and the rain happened whenever they were there.
They were helping us do something. And they left and
it took them three hours to get home because every
which way that they went it was raining and like
the water was coming up. I mean yeah, and their

(12:40):
daughter she was crying like she was so she was
almost like traumatized by because the water was just rising
so high. So he kept on turning around. So three
hours later he did end up going through West Alexander
cause they ran into a cop who kind of told
him which way to go, and about time they got
I think they left my house around six six thirty.

(13:04):
I don't think they got home until nine thirty ten
and then, which was normally how long of a arrived Yeah,
it's like twenty minutes.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
So by the time that they got to Elm Grove
where they lived, the water was there too, but it
had subsided. It was not nearly as bad as it
was in obviously valley girl.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Do you remember the flood when I think the kids,
our kids were little, because I remember the twins were
still in car seats when it was right after Cabella's opened,
and the same thing happened, like all of them grow
was underwater. Do you remember that.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
I don't remember that. I had to be in like
twenty twenty. I don't know why I wouldn't because I
lived in the Rover cool.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yeah, it was bad because my mom was with us,
were coming back from Crabella's like grand opening, and I
wanted to bring her here because I live on top
of the hill and she wanted to go home, and
it took us the same thing forever to get down
and around.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
I mean, we're.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Prone to the river flooding. Yeah, but this was something biblical.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Say, yeah, it was bad. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
So whenever we talk about treatment too with yeah, there's
medications too, especially whenever once it leads to depression and
anxiety antidepressants, anti anxiety meds presos in mini press.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
Did you ever use that nightmare? Yeah, I've used that.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
I still use that a lot for the nightmares.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
And it does say is that patients would tell me
it's not that they don't go away, but they can't
remember them anymore. Yeah, but any they might wake up
like kind of in a state, but they don't know why.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
That's better than yeah, and you get that at nighttime.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
So, but always work with your healthcare providers. Seek how
this year you're experiencing any of these, because it'll snowball and.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Then anti anxiety medicines are the last resources, last the benzodiasms.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, it don't take your friend's medicines.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
Like people come to me and say, well, my friend
gave me this didn't really help, you know, Please don't
do that.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
Please don't go talk to someone professional about it.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
I don't write anything else to cover on this plastic.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
I think we're pretty good. Yeah, well we're glad to
be back. Yes, absolutely, I hope somebody listens. I do too.
We'll this will drop October, I think we said twenty
twenty eighth.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, so, and then again the second and fourth Tuesday
of every month will be a new episode.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Maybe we won't take the holidays off this year or
so four months, four months.

Speaker 5 (15:42):
Yeah. But and on our web page, just there's our email.
If you have any questions or comments or any ideas
for an episode, you know, write us and we'll definitely
look

Speaker 3 (15:55):
Into it, right, yes, we will, all right, all right,
take care, byebye