Deadly Floods, Deadly Fire, And A Scary Combination Of The Two

This mobile home washed away and slammed
into trees during West Virginia's deadly
flash flood on Thursday. i 

Terrible weather disasters sometimes sneak up on us and this past week was no exception.

A well-advertised severe weather outbreak got going Wednesday, but didn't cause as much damage as we thought it would.

Just as we were breathing a sigh of relief, the tail end of that severe weather unleashed the most deadly flash flood in the United States in recent memory, this time striking West Virginia.

Meanwhile, the heat and wildfires seemed to be temporarily subsiding a bit out west, when all of a sudden California faced a wildfire that crews battling it said they've never seen the likes of before.

It literally exploded and raced through neighborhoods in an instant, destroying......

WEST VIRGINIA:

At last check Saturday morning, the death toll had risen to 23 in West Virginia after up to 10 inches of rain fell in just a few hours in parrs of the state Thursday afternoon,

Such rains are even more dangerous in mountainous West Virginia than in flatter country because the masses of water rush off the hillsides with incredible force.

Such was the case in West Virginia Thursday, as people had little or no time to get out of the way of the fast rushing water and rocks and debris. Two boys, ages eight and four were swept away even as adults tried valiantly to pull them from the water.

The nation was shown the spectacle of a video, seen at the bottom of this post of a house on fire being swept down a raging river, then slamming into a bridge.

Greenbriar Sporting Club in West Virginia. Bottom
photo si what the golf courses looked like before the flood.
Top photo is during the storm Thursday.  

Some 500 people have been trapped at a shopping mall in West Virginia for two days now since the access road to the place washed away.

Parts of the famed Greenbrier Sporting Club in West Virginia and its golf courses were under many feet of water Thursday as the resort scrambled to get guests out of harm's way.

Greenbrier is supposed to host its annual PGA Tour event beginning on July 7, notes the New York TImes, but with greens washed away and debris everywhere, that idea is in doubt at the moment.

As of Friday, at least 60 roads in West Virginia were washed out and close to 70,000 people had no electricity.

It's going to take a lot of time for West Virginia to recover from this terrible tragedy.

CALIFORNIA

At the very moment the huge flash floods were terrorizing West Virginia Thursday, a wildfire broke out in Kern County, in a drought-wracked area in south central California.

Firefighters said they'd never seen anything like it.

Fed by hot, dry weather and strong winds, the fire went from practically nothing to an enormous inferno is seemingly no time. The fire tore through rough terrain and into neighborhoods so quickly that firefighters couldn't even keep pace with the racing fire.

The fire covered 11 miles in 13 hours - an unheard of pace for a wildfire, says the Los Angeles Times. It has killed at least two people and destroyed up to 100 homes.

As of late Friday, the fire was just 5 percent contained. Hot temperatures, gusty winds as high as 50 mph and humidity as low as 8 percent are forecast in the fire area today.

It's going to be long, hot, dangerous fire season in much of the southwest this year.

Here's the video of the house on fire going down the river:



Somebody got up on the roof of a building in a West Virginia town and gave us this sad video flood tour:


The Kern County California Fire Department shot this video of the destruction during California's wildfire: