A community stronger than flood waters
- Zaida Bell-Frantz & Lilly Keith
- Nov 11, 2025
- 6 min read
In July 2022, eastern Kentucky faced a flooding that killed 46 people. Three years later, in February 2025, a flood from the North Fork Kentucky River hit the town of Hazard, causing businesses to be displaced, and some the inability to reopen.
With help from the community, businesses in Hazard have been on the path to recovery, shining a light on the resilience, strength and loyalty that remain.
Appalachian Quilt & Craft
Sandra Hurt stands in what has been her life for the past two years. The carpet of her business has been pulled up from the floor, the bare wood exposed. Four inches of drywall and insulation have been ripped away. The shelves are sprinkled throughout the floor no longer holding merchandise.
Quilts no longer hang on the walls. The remainder of the pale blue and white empty walls shine in the afternoon sun. Fans and dehumidifiers sit strewn across the building. Tools for quilt-making lie broken around the store.
“If I smile, I can’t cry about it,” Hurt said as she surveyed her surroundings with a smile on her face.
Hurt’s business, Appalachian Quilt & Craft, was nearly 4 inches deep in water when the worst of the flooding hit. Hurt is a co-owner of the business alongside her sister, Sheridan Sparkman.
With the help of their community, Hurt has picked up the pieces of their store and sewn them back together.
“I really love the work. I loved working there, and the community was so behind it, and we had so many people come in, and they were like, ‘This place has saved my life,’” Hurt said. “‘I had nothing to do,’ ‘I’ve retired,’ ‘This is my happy place.’ We’ve had so many people say that to us.”
The support from her regulars and her community is ever-flowing and indisputable, with everyone who can pitch in offering support. Hurt ended up having to move her business to a different building after all cleaning up the damage.
“We're so thankful, we could never have cleaned it out on our own,” Hurt said. “It’s just people driving down the road that saw us working have stopped, people we don’t know, people we’ll probably never see again.”
Members of the community took some of the fabric damaged by the flood waters and then washed and dried it for Hurt, some even ironing it before returning it.
“Probably at one point, when it first happened, we probably had 20 people in the store,” Hurt said. “Then all of our customers have come in… I mean, hours and hours.”
Hurt estimated that they had gone through about 500 bolts of fabric after the flood damage, one bolt equaling about 12-15 yards.
Despite cleaning the building that flooded, Hurt had to move her business to another area in Hazard after the original landlords doubled her rent.
Today, walking into Appalachian Quilt & Craft, the love and joy shared amongst quilters in the room is seen in conversations between Hurt and customers. Colorful quilts adorn the walls now, creating a backdrop for customers and aspiring quilters to grow their crafting together.
Coal Country Candles
When the river crested in February, Shannon and Randy Gabbard, co-owners of Coal Country Candles, sat in their Hazard home, watching the news and hoping their downtown shop would be spared.
“We ended up with 34 inches of water in the store, so it was pretty devastating. You know, even though we thought we had prepared, we had not prepared,” Shannon said.
The Gabbards had experienced flood damage twice just minutes away at the store's original location, and thought they knew what to expect when the floodwaters receded. Their new shop, however, which had just celebrated its grand opening in August of 2024, was gutted in a matter of hours.
“We felt like we had just got the bulk of the work done that needed to be done,” Shannon said. “And then we started all over.”
The morning after the floodwaters receded, Randy went and bought boots from the local Walmart and picked up a squeegee.
“I felt like I pushed 10,000 pounds of mud out of here,” Randy said.
But they weren’t alone. Within hours, neighbors and strangers alike appeared at their door ready and willing to help. Volunteers ripped out drywall, hauled away debris and Shannon said some even bought cleaning supplies straight from the couple’s Amazon wishlist.
Without flood insurance, the Gabbards relied on local organizations and national grants to help rebuild. The Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky provided Coal Country Candles with a grant to help replace basic items needed for the shop, and American Express also awarded Coal Country Candles a $10,000 grant from their Main Street America USA program for disaster recovery, according to Shannon.
Despite the help, the recovery has been grueling. While Coal Country Candles has reopened, it remains the only business back in the building following the floods.
“Its been a little bit frustrating the building that we're in, of course, the entire building flooded,” Shannon said. “We are the only business that has returned and opened back up in this building, and so that’s made it a bit of a challenge just to make sure people know that ‘Hey, we’re still there, we’re still open.’”
The pair is learning to balance their caution with hope. Randy still thinks about how the $3,500 melter he purchased just two weeks before the floodwaters came within inches of destruction. For now, they’re looking forward to a grand reopening later in the year.
“I cannot imagine, if we had not had the volunteers and the community and the help, we probably would have said, ‘We just can’t do this,’” Shannon said. “We’re extremely thankful for all the helping hands.”
Hot Mess Express 606
The day of the flooding, Stephanie Callahan knew everything needed to be moved out of her store before the water hit. After waiting four hours for a U-Haul, that she never got, she moved everything to what everyone thought would be a safer location.
The water filled the “safer” side of the building in 20 minutes.
Callahan has owned Hot Mess Express 606, a clothing store with a men and women’s department, for almost four years. When she first moved to that building, a customer warned her that if she ever saw the manhole located outside the store bubbling, she needed to move.
“That day, you can ask everybody here, it bubbled all day long. It looked like a water leak,” Callahan said. “Well, now we know what it was. The drains were backing up, and the water was coming up in it.”
Within about an hour and a half, they had almost five feet of water in the men’s store, eventually trickling into the women’s store later that night. About 80% of stock in both stores was lost.
Callahan came in the next morning after some of the water receded to start throwing stock away.
“It’s like everybody in two counties showed up here to try to start whatever we could do,” Callahan said.
Callahan said the football team from a local high school and some of the cheerleaders came to help that day, with about 30 people in each building just trying to help clean up.
“The community is amazing. This place is little, but it’s mighty,” Callahan said. “It’s kind of magical, you know?”
Despite the progress and recovery the storefront had made over four months, Callahan wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Hot Mess was robbed on March 17, just two days after their re-opening. They never found out who had broken in.
Callahan estimated they stole about $20,000 worth of merchandise from her store.
Once again, the community helped Callahan get the store back on its feet. She received donations from different organizations, including the church she attends.
“Hazard is family,” Callahan said. “It’s hard to understand if you’ve never lived here.”
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