By Brendan Muckian-Bates
On July 21st, a line of powerful thunderstorms began moving across West Virginia, bringing with them torrential rain and damaging winds. By that evening, three to five inches of rain had fallen around Buckhannon alone, overwhelming streams and drainage systems, setting the stage for yet another round of catastrophic flash flooding across parts of north-central West Virginia. I watched my Accuweather radar as the storm slowly engulfed my county in the late morning, following Facebook for any updates on emergency response needs nearby. There are several points in Moundsville that have flooded or are at risk of flooding so every major storm is treated with the appropriate heightened sense of awareness.
We were fortunate that the storm passed over us this year, but our friends in Lewis and Upshur County weren’t so lucky. In Buckhannon, Weston, Jane Lew, and surrounding communities, rapidly rising water levels inundated homes and businesses, washing out roads and prompting numerous water rescues. Even after the initial flooding had subsided, runoff continued pouring into rivers and streams, prolonging flood waters into the following day. Ultimately, two individuals from Upshur County lost their lives after their vehicle was swept from the road.
Almost as quickly as the storm appeared it was gone again. Then, the recovery efforts began. A county-wide mutual aid network – the Lewis County Mutual Aid – was created to coordinate volunteer efforts and identify immediate needs. In neighboring Upshur County, a similar network of official agencies, churches, nonprofits, local businesses, and individual volunteers quickly took shape. West Virginia Wesleyan College became one of the centers of that effort, opening its Rockefeller Auxiliary Gym to the public for donations and volunteer efforts.
My father and I headed out early the following week to help out wherever we could. A little over a year prior, a similarly devastating storm had hit a small holler community along the Big Wheeling Creek in Triadelphia. On June 14, 2025, more than three inches of rain fell in an hour near Valley Grove, sending Wheeling Creek’s waters to rush over its banks carrying floodwaters downstream through Triadelphia and into Wheeling neighborhoods. Waters rose at an alarming rate, sweeping away vehicles and destroying homes and businesses too, claiming nine lives across the affected Ohio County communities.
Just as in Lewis and Upshur counties, neighbors and volunteers immediately began organizing around the people who had lost their homes, their vehicles, and in some cases, loved ones. Likewise, a mutual aid network had been established to help with immediate short-term recovery needs; however, in the case of Triadelphia, the Ohio Valley Mutual Aid group had been formed months prior. This meant that organizers were not starting from scratch. They already had an established contact list and a trusted network of local volunteers who could begin connecting individuals, donations, supplies, funds, and requests for help almost immediately.
As we arrived in Buckhannon at Wesleyan College early in the morning, the evidence of the flood was everywhere. National Guard trucks crisscrossed the town, delivering debris to an offloading site while repair and cleanup crews continued working on damaged roads and infrastructure. Many homes had already placed their damaged furniture out near the road alongside dozens of black garbage bags waiting to be hauled away. The smell was reminiscent of the June 2025 flood, an olfactory reminder that stays with you anytime you’re near it again.
At the college’s gymnasium, one of several main distribution hubs set up in the county, volunteers moved in and out with shopping carts loading and unloading everything from bleach and dog food to personal hygiene items and potable water. It was a truly impressive sight to behold – how quickly so many people had come together to ensure that their neighbors, their family, their friends were taken care of.
After spending a few hours helping out and talking with Buckhannon locals about the storm’s impact, we learned how much worse Weston and Lewis County got hit. So, we decided to head west and find a volunteer operation where we could lend a hand. We traveled to St. Patrick’s Church, which had been the site of some terrible flooding but whose gymnasium had been thankfully spared. There, parishioners had established a base of operations for supplies and volunteers.
And there, we saw devastation even worse than before. As my father said, “It looks like a bomb went off.” The West Fork River, which runs through the heart of Weston, had flooded so quickly that residents on either side didn’t have sufficient warning to prepare for any evacuation or preparation to meet this emergency. Many of the homes along North River Avenue, which runs parallel to the West Fork River, bore the brunt of this damage, though the waters spared few that day.
At St. Patrick’s, we were paired with a few other volunteer groups who had recently arrived from around the state to assist with mucking out homes. The newly-installed bishop for the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese, Most Reverend Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, had been out with crews rebuilding roofs and cleaning out homes in the days following the disaster and his presence alongside other faith leaders performing strenuous manual labor may have led to an increased interest from parishes seeking to volunteer their time and energies in the area. We were sent to the former city manager’s home and began work pulling up warped boards and taking down some interior walls along with a family that had arrived from Mason County that morning to help out as well. When we arrived, I looked down at the West Fork River and the neighboring homes, wondering how the water had risen as high as it did so quickly. We were told by others affected by the storm that it took less than an hour for the water levels to rise several feet, washing out whole areas of the town.
After we finished our tasks and began to drive back home, I thought about everyone who was, once again, about to live through the emotionally-taxing process of long-term recovery. Families who one day were going about their business, running errands, and finishing up chores were thrust into life-altering situations alongside their friends and neighbors. Family memories – pictures and yearbooks, videos and other mementos – destroyed in an hour. As one of the homeowners told us, “Don’t worry, you’ve got to have something to laugh about; nothing is sacred anymore.”
But maybe there was something worth holding sacred that day. It was there, in the volunteers pushing shopping carts through the gymnasium in Buckhannon, in the parishioners at St. Patrick’s making hot meals and organizing crews, and in the families who had driven hours across the state simply because other West Virginians needed help. None of them could replace the pictures, furniture, or homes that the waters had taken away. What they could do, though, was make sure that no one had to begin that long process of recovery alone.
On our way back to Moundsville, I kept thinking about the familiarity of it all. Another summer, another flood, another community suddenly facing months or years rebuilding. But I had also witnessed something else for the second summer in a row: ordinary people responding to extraordinary loss, showing up for one another when it mattered most. Flood recovery does not happen in a day, and no single volunteer can undo what the water leaves behind. We recover by doing what we can, for whoever needs us, one neighbor at a time. Or, as the famous quote by Rabbi Tarfon in the Pirkei Avot teaches us, “It is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.”
