INSPECTING THE DAMAGE – Gov. Patrick Morrisey, second from left, and Adjutant General Jim Seward, second from right, tour storm damage in Southern West Virginia earlier this week. -- Contributed

CHARLESTON – It’s a story told nearly every winter: rain combined with snowmelt have caused dangerous flooding across the state.

West Virginia begins disaster recovery, with millions in federal dollars pulled down to clean up and rebuild. But will stories be told about West Virginia putting in place projects to reduce the intensity and damage of future floods?

Once again, counties in the southern part of West Virginia are pushing mud and water out of their homes and businesses after between 3 and 5 inches of rain poured down on a 13-county region between Feb. 14 through Feb. 16. So far, two grandparents and one of their granddaughters have died from flash flooding.

This is the first natural disaster for Gov. Patrick Morrisey, who has only been governor for more than 40 days since first taking office on Jan. 13. Morrisey and Jim Seward, the new Adjutant General of the West Virginia National Guard, have been on the ground in Southern West Virginia inspecting the damage, meeting with volunteers and first responders, and figuring out the next steps for disaster relief and recovery.

“I want to emphasize that this continues to be an aggressive effort by folks at the local level and the state level to coordinate all of the activities,” Morrisey said Thursday in a briefing from the Governor’s Reception Room at the State Capitol Building. “Those efforts are going to continue over the course of the next several days, but this is truly Team West Virginia at its finest.”

According to a summary of billion-dollar climate disasters by the National Centers of Environmental Information, an agency within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, West Virginia experienced 47 confirmed weather and climate disasters between 1980 and 2024 with losses exceeding $1 billion each.

Of the 47 events, two were flooding events ($2 billion to $5 billion), 18 were severe storm events ($1 billion to $2 billion), six were tropical cyclone events ($500 million to $1 billion), and 12 were winter storm events ($500 million to $1 billion), with the total costs between $5 billion and $10 billion.

It is yet unclear how much damage the February rains caused by dollar amount. But Morrisey requested a federal disaster declaration from President Donald Trump for the affected counties, a request supported by West Virginia’s congressional delegation. A similar declaration has already been granted for neighboring Kentucky. A federal disaster declaration would start the process for FEMA dollars to flow to the state.

“We’ve been talking to FEMA,” Morrisey said. “I am hopeful we’ll be receiving some feedback fairly soon. We know that some of the highest priority counties, we feel very good that they should meet the trigger to qualify for FEMA assistance.”

While the recent rains were bad, it pales in comparison with the floods in southern and central West Virginia nearly nine years ago. On June 23, 2016, the state experienced a 1,000-year flood event that dropped between 8 inches and 10 inches of rain in 12 hours across parts of Fayette, Greenbrier, Kanawha, Nicholas, and Summers counties, killing 23 people and causing more than $1 billion in damage.

Following state controversies with the RISE West Virginia program responsible for spending $149.9 million in community development block grant monies from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for disaster recovery, the Legislature created the Joint Legislative Committee on Flooding.

At the urging of the Flood Committee, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 586 in 2020, reorganizing the former Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety into the Department of Homeland Security and creating the State Resiliency Office within the Governor’s Office. The office was created to work with state agencies to ensure that parts of the state hit with natural disasters and man-made emergencies can bounce back quickly. It also manages non-federal disaster and hazard mitigation grant funding.

Lawmakers further reformed the State Resiliency Office in 2023 with SB 677, giving the office authority over the West Virginia Disaster Recovery Fund previously administered by the Division of Homeland Security. The fund can be used to provide money for disaster recovery for people, local governments, emergency services and local organizations. The bill included $10 million for the fund, which can be replenished each year.

SB 677 also created the West Virginia Flood Resiliency Trust Fund within the State Resiliency and Flood Protection Act. The fund would be used to encourage local governments to work on flood protection and prevention projects. It would prioritize low-income geographic areas and prioritize nature-based solutions — using the local environment and features to protect against flood damage.

However, the Legislature has never appropriated money for the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund. During his eighth and final State of the State address on the first day of the 2024 legislative session, former governor Jim Justice called for a one-time $100 million appropriation, with $50 million set aside for congressional earmarks and $50 million for flood mitigation.

The funding was included in his version of the budget bill – Senate Bill 200 – setting the general revenue budget for fiscal year 2025 beginning Monday, but the funding was stripped out by lawmakers in the version of the budget. Justice had called for the $50 million Flood Resiliency Trust Fund appropriation to be included in a May 2024 special session, but the funding was never appropriated.

Speaking during a press conference Monday, Morrisey said his current focus is responding to the current disaster. But he, along with Seward and other state emergency management officials, are already planning to take the lessons they are learning from this disaster and to help inform their mitigation planning.

“The way we’re handling this is that we have the immediate short-term issues,” Morrisey said. “We have to make sure that we’re dealing with everything on the ground so that we’re helping people who need that assistance right away. So, as the water recedes and we’re getting to some of the rebuilding efforts, that’s kind of the next phase of the process.

“What you do is after an event like this, you do a post-event assessment, and you review everything that happened at the beginning, how everything got handled from the onset through the end,” Morrisey continued. “And then I think you try to have critical learnings about what happened with all the different entities involved, with emergency management, with all of the agencies that are involved about how the process has worked historically, what happened today, and if you can continue to make improvements in the process.”

Morrisey has proposed making changes to the state department that manages disaster response. Senate Bill 452 would make the Adjutant General of the West Virginia National Guard the cabinet secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and hold dual roles.

The State Resiliency Office would remain within the Governor’s Office. According to a review of Morrisey’s proposed fiscal year 2026 general revenue budget being considered by the Legislature, the State Resiliency Office’s budget would increase slightly, from $623,744 in the current fiscal year to $626,650 in the next fiscal year beginning on July 1.

Del. Dean Jeffries, R-Kanawha, has served as co-chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on Flooding since its inception. Speaking before Thursday’s morning’s floor session, Jeffries said he has not heard about any proposed changes to the State Resiliency Office.

“There’s not been any discussions with me,” Jeffries said. “Now, that’s not saying there hasn’t been discussions, but as far as the Flood Committee goes, we have not heard anything about them.”

According to reporting by the Charleston Gazette-Mail and Mountain State Spotlight, there remains no proposed funding for the Disaster Recovery Trust Fund and the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund. Jeffries said he hopes the Governor’s Office considers appropriating funding for the State Resiliency Office to begin serious flood mitigation efforts.

“Mitigation is important in West Virginia, and that’s one of the reasons we set up to the Resiliency Office, not only for just the preparedness of our state and the recovery from these disasters, but also for coordination of FEMA and government agencies to make sure the funding is there,” Jeffries said.

The State Resiliency Office met a June 30, 2024, deadline for an updated flood resiliency plan. The state’s earlier flood protection plan, first begun under Gov. Cecil Underwood in 1998 and completed under Gov. Bob Wise in 2004, was never implemented. The SRO conducted a review of the 2004 plan in 2022, but SB 677 required a new flood protection plan.

The new state flood resiliency plan — available for public viewing at sro.wv.gov — is required to be reviewed on an annual basis. Bob Martin, the director of the State Resiliency Office, told the Joint Legislative Committee on Flooding last November that a working group was meeting monthly on reviewing the flood resiliency plan.

Planning has begun on the state’s third annual flood symposium scheduled for April 2025, which will also include a review of the flood resiliency plan. Morrisey acknowledged Monday that previous administrations did not pay enough attention to implementing the previous flood mitigation plan over a 22-year period.

“We know that there hadn’t been an update on that flood assessment for a very long time and that it had not received the attention that it needed,” Morrisey said. “We want to come back to you and have the chance to look at that and make further recommendations to the public about where that stands.”

Morrisey said the state’s topography is always going to present challenges when it comes to the increasing number of storms and disasters. But he said his administration will take those challenges seriously and work on efforts to reduce the future severity of storm damage and potential loss of life.

“People know as you fly over and you see the hills and hollers that…when you have heavy rain, when you have 5 inches of rain come in, there’s literally no place for the water to go. It’s very, very difficult. And so, we have to evaluate that,” Morrisey said.

“I will say this to you, protecting our citizens and making sure that they’re kept safe during difficult times: that’s job one of a governor,” Morrisey continued. “We’re going to do everything we can and we’re going to have the right personnel in place to make sure that that happens.”

(Adams can be contacted at sadams@newsandsentinel.com)