Seventeen-year-old with dog rescued from rooftop

Chloe Adams was at home when water started pouring into the house in Whitesburg, Kentucky. She put her dog in a plastic crate and swam out to a neighbor’s roof, where she and the dog got stuck for hours.

“It was water as far as I could see. I had a panic attack,” she tells CNN.

The images of 17-year-old Chloe Adams, sitting with her dog on the roof ridge surrounded by water, have become telling of the flood disaster in Kentucky in the United States.

She lives with her grandparents in the affected community of Whitesburg, but they were separated by the rushing waters. Chloe Adams realized she had to get out of the house to survive. At first she was forced to wade through waist-high water to find something to put her dog Sandy in. Finally, she found a plastic crate to put the pet in.

“I understood the dangers of swimming through deep moving water. But it felt like I had no choice,” she writes to CNN.

“Lost everything”

She made her way to a nearby rooftop, the only part of the building still above the water’s surface. There, Chloe Adams and the dog waited, until they could later be rescued with the help of a kayak.

“She waited for hours before she could be rescued. She is a hero,” writes her father Terry Adams in a Facebook post and continues:

“We lost everything today… everything except what matters most”.

The flooding has been caused by rain earlier in the week that hammered the Appalachian mountainsides, then swept down the valleys and caused widespread and flash flooding in eastern Kentucky.

At least 25 dead

So far, 25 fatalities have been confirmed, a number that is expected to rise. Four of the victims are children. According to American media, the children together with other family members must have held on to a tree, but one by one lost their grip and were swept away by the water currents.

The National Guard from several states has been deployed, as have other emergency workers, and so far rescued 1,400 Kentuckians. More than 650 of them have been rescued by helicopters, according to the Governor’s Staff.

Rescue efforts are underway, and Governor Andy Beshear is highlighting those involved in the search and rescue effort.

“What they experience on site is extremely stressful and difficult. We thank everyone involved for their tireless efforts,” he said in a statement.

Money for funerals

US President Joe Biden has granted individual aid to victims of the floods in Kentucky.

Beshear says the victims lost everything and the recovery will be long.

The state has also started a crisis fund, where the first payments will go to the funerals of the victims.

– It is devastating. We have entire cities that are under water, houses at the water line that are just gone, there’s nothing left of them,” Beshear told NPR.