LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Winter weather in Kentucky is complicating rescue and recovery efforts from weekend floods. Fourteen people died, and more than a thousand were displaced. Some of them are housed in shelters at state parks. Karyn Czar with member station WUKY visited one shelter that's now cut off by high water.
KARYN CZAR, BYLINE: As I traveled across central and eastern Kentucky, this was the repeated message from my GPS.
SIRI: The route may be affected by Kentucky floods.
CZAR: Along the way, there were remnants of the storm - mud-caked buildings and parking lots, swollen rivers, and ponds where roads should be.
(RAINING)
CZAR: I finally reached Jenny Wiley State Park in the Appalachian Mountains. It's 10:30 at night. The park has a lodge that's been turned into a shelter. But to get there, you have to take a boat.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOAT MOTOR)
CZAR: That's because the road to the lodge has become a lake. The tip of a stop sign pokes out of the water as we pass.
MARDI SIMPSON: You know, they had FEMA, Red Cross, the ARH - was all over here.
CZAR: Mardi Simpson (ph) is steering the pontoon boat. He says relief agencies have been on site to help the more than 140 people sheltering here. Nearly a third of them are children. Simpson has been ferrying many of the displaced residents to their cars and back. He drops me off where the road picks up.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CZAR: Thank you so much for the ride.
Up at the Jenny Wiley lodge, the night staff looks exhausted. There's a crackling fire and a doorway decorated with pink and red hearts. It's leftover from Valentine's, the day before the rain began to fall. Chad Ratliff holds a bag of snacks.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUSTLING)
CZAR: He's from the nearby town of Coal Run. He and his family got an emergency text to evacuate in the middle of the night on Saturday as water surrounded their home.
CHAD RATLIFF: It's close to midnight when they're saying, hey, you got to get out, or we can't come help you.
CZAR: He talked with his wife about where to go, and she saw the state park option on Facebook.
RATLIFF: So all the hotels in Pikeville were full, and she had heard Jenny Wiley had some rooms. It was first come, first serve, so we headed this direction. And probably if we had waited a little while, might not even been able to get here.
CZAR: Ratliff said he's overwhelmed by the scope of this disaster.
RATLIFF: All of my neighbors around me and everywhere and the whole shopping centers - it's just devastation.
CZAR: And the devastation doesn't stop there. People in all of Kentucky's 120 counties have been affected. Ratliff, his eyes sad, forces a smile and heads to his room for the night.
For NPR News, I'm Karyn Czar at Jenny Wiley State Park in Prestonsburg, Kentucky.
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