BELFRY, Ky. – Thirty-one days after a horrific flood ravaged portions of eastern Pike and southwestern Mingo counties, water exceeded the banks of Pond Creek once again yesterday evening, sending residents scampering to move vehicles and possessions to higher ground.

At 6:30 p.m., water entered homes on Pearl Street in Belfry across the highway from Belfry Middle School. Residents who have been cleaning up from the May 9 flood could do nothing but watch as the water erased in mere minutes the clean-up work it had taken weeks to perform.

“ You try to clean up from the flood and then another comes along to mess it up again. It’s all so sickening” said Ann Booten, a Pearl Street resident who watched with her husband Jack, as her tri-level house was flooded again.

“Every time it rains now, the water comes up” Ann Booten said.

Bill Ireson, a 42-year resident of Pearl Street said, “A month and a day later, here we go again. I’ve lived here since ’75 and seen it happen again and again.”

Ireson said that the waters of Thursday evening, while damaging and discouraging, were not of the same magnitude as the May floods. “We’ve seen it flood like this before, but it’s not like the one we had last month. This came fast – but not as fast as it did then.”

Down the road from Belfry, the road at Toler, leading to Hatfield Funeral Chapel, saw the creek take it as well.

“My aunt called me to come down to her house and look how high the water was,” said one motorist trying to decide whether to traverse the flooded road. “I didn’t think when I got here I’d be having to go through water. This came fast”.

A little further down U.S.119, Coleman Road at the intersection at Velocity Market at Toler, the creek water had moved so quickly that residents had no time to get out vehicles or possessions.

“It came across the road at around 6:35,” Randy Staten told this reporter. “It came fast – not quite like the last time – but fast. When I came out at first, the water on the road was just up around the bottom of my shoes. Twenty minutes later and it’s now up to my knees.”

Staten said that virtually the same Coleman Road residents who were flooded last month “got it again.”

At Forest Hills, Pond Creek was on the verge of reclaiming the Belfry Area Little League Baseball and Youth Soccer fields again. They were completely destroyed by May’s flooding.

As he watched the water continue to raise, Staten talked about the flooding and how it’s changed recently.

“It hasn’t always come this fast – this is just recent.” remarked Staten

Booten and Ireson had similar thoughts about the flooding.

“The way they’ve filled in these creeks is behind a lot of the way it floods now. People fill in and will cut down trees and let them fill up the creek banks and never offer to move them.” said Ireson. “And they can say what they want to – this mountaintop removal has to have a lot to do with it.”

“ The waterfalls running off the sides of these mountains are like I’ve never seen before in all the time I’ve lived here” Ireson add

“The (Belouse and those lots down by it weren’t there years ago.” Booten said. “When they filled that in, it changed how and where this water goes. We’ve told them that and they say no.”

“They will tell you that their fills were legal and all - and maybe they are legal,” added Ireson. “But down there at the courthouse area and the old Mary Ellen Coal Company lots – they’ve filled the property in and the creek doesn’t have anyplace to go like it used to.”

The worst part of Thursday night’s flooding for these residents is in the fact that now they face yet another clean-up. And this time, they didn’t even have time to recover from the one before it.

“We haven’t even had time to settle our claims with FEMA yet.” said Booten. “I don’t know what they’ll say now.”

“I’ve already redone most of the downstairs and the basement from the last one. I’ve put money into re-doing it and had contractors come in to give estimates on the rest. Now, all that’s got tobe done again.”said Ireson.

When asked if he thought FEMA would try to tie the two floods together, Ireson said “They might – I don’t know. I hope not. We’ve already spent out and now have to again.”

Both Booten and Ireson had the same solution.

“The state needs to buy us all out or raise us up.” Booten stated. “This is awful to keep going through.”

“They could raise our houses up, like at Forest Hills and other places they’ve raised them.” added Ireson. “Or they could buy us out and make a big vacant parking lot for the middle school – they sure could use it – and then the water would have a place to go where it wouldn’t hurt anybody.”