“We’re not born just to pay bills and die.” ~ Unknown
I had to go to West Liberty to photograph the damage to Aunt Janet’s yard (the house is fine, thankfully). I decided to take a drive up to Flat Gap where flash floods earlier in the week took the life of my mother’s childhood friend, Willa Mae Holbrook Pennington, and her grandson who tried to save her.
Just a stone’s throw from the Pennington Trailer Park where Willa Mae was swept away sat the Ramey Branch Gospel Church. It, too, was flooded, water rising above the doors, destroying everything inside. The congregation held Sunday morning services anyway. Folks brought in tents, borrowed folding chairs, and set up in the parking lot beside a dumpster filled with pews.
Photographs really don’t express just how bad the devastation is. I had much the same reaction when I saw West Liberty after the tornado, like an alternate reality, but this mud encrusted little holler is something completely different. It smells really, really bad. The mud is thick, bugs are thick, the water line in places is truly unbelievable. Frankly, I don’t know how more people didn’t die but by the grace of God. It must have been terrifying. The deacon of the Ramey Branch Church says they’ll rebuild as soon as they can. Right now, they’re just trying to make the best of a horrible situation. So, they held service in the only thing they have left; the parking lot.
Shirley Terry
Only you can capture the real meaning in your pictures. Loved the little church steeple over top the dumpster and the angel sitting aside in the parking lot. I pray for those poor people in Flat Gap and for my friend’s, Willa Mae Johnson, family.
Kopana
pictures don’t do the destruction justice, do they? devastation of biblical proportions 🙁