The Federal Emergency Management Agency has opened another disaster recovery center for the early April floods. This one is in northern Kentucky, in the Pendleton County Emergency Operations Center in Falmouth. Pendleton Judge-Executive David Fields said 51 people have reported damage, but water level gauges in the south and north Licking Rivers gave officials a chance to offer early warnings.
“I think that's saved a lot of our citizens. And actually, you know, a lot of them did clean out their basements, because they knew that if the drains weren’t draining, it's going to back up there.”
The north and south Licking Rivers become one in Falmouth, the county seat of Pendleton. There they join and flow north to the Ohio River. In 1997, a historic flood killed five people and destroyed nearly a thousand homes. The early April flood wasn’t nearly as bad, thanks in part to the water level gauges that weren’t there in 1997.
“So we can actually do a site and say, okay, with, if this level, this is how many houses, it's going to be effective, I mean, and it's pretty accurate.”
FEMA officials say the deadline to apply for federal assistance is June 25.
