COVINGTON, Ky. — Areas along the Licking River and Banklick Creek were especially hard hit by the weekend’s flooding.
One building, the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Latonia, was one illustrative example. By the time the river crested, the building was completely inaccessible by foot – it resembled a castle fort surrounded by a moat.
The man upstairs didn’t seem to mind, though.
“I didn’t know it was going to get that high,” Harold Enda told our news partner LINK nky in a phone call. “The next thing I know, I look out and the parking lot was covered in water.”
Enda lives in the room up top. He’s lived in the room on the top floor of the building for about six years. He tends the bar and does volunteer work around the VFW.
“Last I saw on the cameras before the electric went off, we had a three foot of water in the building approximately,” said Joe Cross, district commander with the VFW, on Thursday morning.
This was not the first time the post has had to deal with flooding like this, and VFW State Legislative and State Finance Chairman (and Covington City Commissioner) James Toebbe said the post was more prepared this year with the benefit of experience.
The river crested at 60.5 feet in [2018],” Toebbe said. “It’s a very similar thing. We weren’t as prepared because the flood prior to that was ’97 at the post.”
Toebbe said that in 2018, “the post wasn’t financially prepared, so we had to hold off until we got a check from insurance. It took about four months. So, we were down for probably close to a half a year, but everything got redone. We cut walls out, redid the flooring and started all over again.”
Veterans are familiar with disaster preparedness, Toebbe said, so this time, volunteers came out to move many of the chairs, tables, gaming machines and other objects off the floor to mitigate the damage before the flooding accelerated. Cross and Toebbe said that they had expected about a foot of water to get into the building, only to find that about three feet had gotten in when they checked on Sunday.
Enda, meanwhile, has a heart condition, Cross said, so “we recommended he get out. He refused to, and it was happening so quickly. It was one of those things that we couldn’t really do much about it.”
Enda had some supplies to hold him over during the flooding, and the upper floor has its own electric infrastructure. Enda never lost power, even when the flooding was at its worst.
“I can stay there and still watch TV and still cook and everything else,” Enda said.
Toebbe said some people from the community kayaked some supplies out to Enda on Tuesday.
“They kayaked him a couple packs of cigarettes, a gallon of milk and, I think, some candy,” Toebbe said. “So, he could have clearly went right back out with them and chose not to.”
By Thursday, much of the water had receded.
“It’s all just clean up now,” Enda said.
Cross and some insurance adjusters did a walk-through of the building on Thursday to survey the damage. Given that the VFW had more contingency plans in place this time, Cross and Toebbe said that its operations wouldn’t be overly delayed. Community members had come out to check on the building even as the floods were occurring, so Toebbe was optimistic they could get cleanup help in a timely fashion.
“I think that’s one of the differences between 2018 and now is the post has been so much more focused on community involvement lately, and I think that’s the reason they’re getting the reception they are from the community,” Toebbe said. “Every [social media] post that they make out there, you’ll see 10 people asking, ‘Hey, when can we help? What do you need help with?'”
Cross and Toebbe said the post was definitely still on track to host its community fishing Derby in June. The derby will take place at the large lake behind the building.
“It’s gonna be a lot of work, but veterans are resilient,” Toebbe said. “We’ll overcome it and be back better than before and learn something every time.”
