RAINELLE, W.Va.—Penny McClure eyed the creek swelling up behind the Go Mart as she worked her shift on the morning of June 23. It didn’t seem ominous. Just an unpleasant, rainy day in West Virginia.
Customers streamed in for supplies. Nobody seemed too worried.
Then the rain sped up in the afternoon. The creeks churned faster and the sky grew dark — so dark that Robert Frank’s young daughter asked if she had fallen asleep and woken up at night.
McClure’s phone beeped with alert after alert from the National Weather Service. Thunderstorms, forecasters warned. Potential flash floods.
A few blocks away, Karol Dunford called her daughter and said she could see water rising up in the distance. She was alone, she said, and the power was out.
As they surveyed the sky in their town of 1,500 people that Thursday afternoon, they did not imagine that the rain would keep pouring down and the water would keep rising, that within hours it would turn their town into a lake and trap dozens whose screams would echo all night. By daybreak, at least 23 would be dead across the state.
