Ten years later, rain can still trigger panic in Kay Summers. On June 23, 2016, she and her husband were trapped upstairs in their home as water rapidly filled the town of Clendenin during a historic flood.
The smell of the mud from the disaster lingers, she said.
“[To] this day, if I go outside and it starts raining, I have to check everything,” she said. “Because I’m so afraid [of] what’s going to happen.”
The flash floods that day killed 23 people across West Virginia, including six in Kanawha County. Rainwater ruined countless businesses, schools in the area, along with a library, grocery store, and more than 30 homes.
But slowly, most of what the flood took a decade ago has come back to it.
In 2023, seven years after the flood destroyed it, Herbert Hoover High School reopened in a new building and location. The next year, a brand new Clendenin Elementary School did the same. Just last year, a new grocery store finally opened in the same spot where floodwaters had destroyed the previous one.
Summers, now the mayor of Clendenin, prefers to look on the bright side of the disaster. The town’s two new schools replaced old ones that needed to be replaced, she said. Its methodist church took on water, but the sanctuary was spared. During repairs on the building, workers discovered that the sanctuary had deteriorated and could have collapsed on its own at any time, she said.
“Now that’s a blessing. That’s a positive that came from that flood,” she said. “That’s a God thing, that’s a God thing… And every church has some kind of story like that. [The flood] brought people closer together.
“I just think we have so much to celebrate. I mean, more people could have died,” she said.
“We were somber for so long,” Summers said of the reason to mark the anniversary with a celebration.
Summers and her late husband rebuilt their home after water took out the house’s first floor. She picked through ruined family photo albums and other artifacts, deciding what could be salvaged and what needed to be thrown away.
Her family didn’t qualify for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, so they used their own resources. They stayed in Clendenin mostly because of her late husband’s devotion to the town, she said.
“He kept saying, ‘We’ve got to stay, we’ve got to do this,’” Summers said.
Water came up ‘outrageously fast’
Kanawha County Emergency Management Director C.W. Sigman recalls that on the day of the flood, water rescue calls came in as creeks and rivers rose in Clendenin and Elkview.
“We ended up mobilizing a lot of Kanawha County up there fairly quick,” Sigman said. “Water came up on the smaller tributaries just outrageously fast. And actually it came up really fast on the Elk, for as big a river as it is, it came up pretty quick.”
Sigman and others in his office were on the scene of several water rescues, and discovered some of the people who were swept away and didn’t make it, he said.
Of the six people who perished from Kanawha County, five drowned and one died as a result of a car accident, according to records from the state Medical Examiner’s Office reported by West Virginia MetroNews at the time.
“It’s tough. People say you get used to it. You don’t,” Sigman said. “But it’s what we do, and if we don’t do it, it won’t get done. So, like all the responders, all the police, fire, and EMS, and all those folks on the front lines every day, it’s tough what you see, but somebody has to do it, so we’re just going to deal with it.”
Rebuilding slowly
Visitors to Clendenin Town Hall pass by a bench memorializing the “historical flood,” of June 23, 2016 just outside the building’s front door. “Clendenin Strong,” the bench reads, with an image of the town’s signature cardinal.
The town could not have been rebuilt without the countless volunteers who came to help from around the country, Summers said.
“We would not be where we are today if we had not had those people come in,” she said. “Some of them just came in and cut grass, some just came in and painted a house, and some came in and built a porch…. I just would love to be able to go back and thank all those people for everything they did for our community.”
Kanawha County Commission President Ben Salango, first appointed to the commission about seven months after the flood, said one of the county’s first tasks at that time was to help reopen the bridge to the Elkview Crossings Mall. The bridge had washed out during the flood, trapping hundreds of people there. Without access to the mall, hundreds of mall employees were out of work.
Mall property owner Tara Retail Group declared bankruptcy after the flood. A federal judge put the property into receivership and ordered the property’s mortgage holder to pay for the bridge, according to media reports at the time.
Salango said one of his earliest memories of serving on the commission was watching how hard former Commissioner Kent Carper worked to reopen the bridge.
“I remember coming off the elevator one time. I’d only been on the county commission for probably two weeks, and I remember hearing Kent yelling down the hallway. He was on the phone with somebody, and it was about that bridge. I just remember how hard he fought, quite frankly, to get that bridge rebuilt, including potential litigation and trying to work with the federal government, which can be very difficult sometimes.”
"[That] was not an easy task; that was very difficult,” Salango said. “But it was vital because you had all those businesses across on the other side that were closed until the bridge reopened.”
The commission also focused on encouraging local business growth and boosting recreation tourism in the Elkview and Clendenin areas, according to Salango.
I just think we have so much to celebrate.
— Kay Summers,
Mayor of the town of Clendenin.
The Clendenin Rail Trail, part of the Elk River Trail system, opened last year, encouraging outdoor activity in the area.
“It’s brought people in from out of town, out of state,” Summers said of the trail. “We’ve had horseback riding. We have bicycles. We have wheelchairs. We have baby strollers. It’s brought a lot of people. There’s people on the trail every day.”
In 2022, the town opened the Dr. O.M. Harper Stage, an outdoor performance area on Main Street that it uses during festivals and town events.
“Quite frankly, they’ve done a great job, not necessarily the commission, Mayor Kay Summers has been very active and very persistent in trying to revitalize Clendenin and the entire Elkview area,” Salango said. “Rebuilding the school was important for schools working on that. The new opening, the new grocery store recently.”
Clendenin Brewing Company first opened in 2022, a new business after the flood. Current owners Rebekah and Evan Harding purchased the business in 2024.
Rebekah Harding said the couple visited Clendenin during a festival and fell in love with the town. Evan Harding grew up in Clarksburg, she said, and he wanted to get back to West Virginia. The couple looked all over the state and Clendenin seemed to be the best fit, she said.
“It just felt like a Hallmark movie, it was just like a small town feel,” she said. “Everybody was very welcoming … Now that we’re here, it’s like everybody knows everybody, no matter what store you go into, you know the people who work there, you know other people coming in. It’s just — it’s Mayberry.”
Salango said Clendenin’s flood recovery didn’t happen overnight, but slowly and surely. He recalled visiting Clendenin for a Little League tournament recently. He drove around looking at the businesses that are open there. Watermarks from the flood are still visible, he said.
“I’m very proud of Elkview and Clendenin for how they all worked together to rebuild,” Salango said. “If you go there now, it’s hard to imagine that 10 years ago the place was just devastated, it was just completely washed out.
“Now you’ve got businesses open, you’ve got the brewery, you’ve got the stage downtown on the riverbank. It’s great to see the progress. It’s just taken a long time.”
Lori Kersey is a reporter for West Virginia Watch, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.
