Perry County Reports Progress One Year After Devastating February 2025 Floods

A year after floodwaters tore through Perry County and the city of Hazard, county leaders say the community has clawed back much of what was lost in the immediate aftermath, though the harder, slower work of long-term rebuilding and flood mitigation is far from finished.

Perry County officials report that many businesses have reopened and essential services have been restored since the February 2025 disaster, describing the overall recovery trajectory as steady. But the assessment comes with a clear caveat: short-term stabilization is not the same as full recovery, and significant rebuilding and mitigation efforts remain incomplete.

The scale of the original emergency was staggering. Gov. Andy Beshear reported that more than 1,000 water rescues were conducted over a single weekend as the floods peaked. At least 12 people were confirmed dead as of February 17, 2025, a toll that officials expected to climb as floodwaters receded. FEMA representatives and mutual aid teams from other states arrived in Kentucky that Sunday to support search and rescue operations. With a winter storm watch set to take effect Tuesday evening across much of Kentucky, including Louisville, rescuers faced the compounding threat of 2 to 6 inches of snow bearing down on already-saturated communities.

"There are still people that are in harm's way," Beshear said at the time. "We need to make sure we don't create additional emergency situations so that all of our first responders can get those who we know are stranded and need help."

The floods also delivered a painful symbolic blow to the region. The Eastern Kentucky Flood Memorial, which stands on Main Street near City Hall in Hazard, was photographed partially submerged on a Sunday afternoon during the height of the February 2025 flooding. The stone monument bears 46 names, each a life lost in the 2022 flooding that had already swept through 14 counties in Eastern Kentucky. Topped by an outline of the state of Kentucky with a heart placed near Hazard and the words "EKY Strong," the memorial had been unveiled just six months earlier, in August 2024, by Perry County Sheriff Joe Engle and designer Rachel Crawford. Crawford created the memorial in part as a tribute to her brother, 18-year-old Aaron "Mick" Crawford, one of the 2022 flood's victims. Beshear had visited the monument just six weeks before it was swallowed by the next disaster.

One year on, the image of that submerged memorial captures something that recovery statistics alone cannot: the cumulative weight of repeated flooding on a community still processing the losses of 2022 when 2025 arrived. County leaders have not yet provided specifics on which mitigation projects are underway, what timelines look like, or how much funding has been secured for long-term flood control infrastructure. Those answers will define the next chapter of Perry County's recovery.