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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview with Steve Kappa

Aired May 05, 2002 - 08:03   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: To the Appellations where deadly flood waters are starting to recede. At least six people are dead and several others missing. We're joined on the phone now by Steve Kappa, director for the West Virginia office of emergency services. Steve, good morning. Can you give us an update on the latest conditions?

STEVE KAPPA, OFFICE OF EMERGENCY SERVICES: Good morning, Kyra. The governor of West Virginia, Governor Bob Wise requested a state of emergency Thursday evening as the storm developed and then on Friday, the governor requested President Bush declare West Virginia and the southern four counties a federal disaster area.

Presently, we're awaiting word from Washington on the status of that request. The governor has mobilized all of state government to respond to the emergency. We presently have 700 National Guard soldiers who were mobilized late Friday. They are now in Mcdow County and Mingo and Mercer Counties. They have part of the effort yesterday and today to search and rescue. Besides those that you've indicated that have perished, we still have up to seven individuals who are not accounted for. They are doing a search now looking for them. They're going door to door, checking with family members to see who may in fact, be missing.

A large part of the work is restoring essential service. We have approximately one-half of the county who are without water because the storm simply inundated all the water plants. In some cases land slides destroyed the water plants. We have, this morning, about 2,500 residents of the county still without electrical power. In addition, we have sections of two counties, Mcdow and Mingo Counties, that are still without phone service, so we are working rather quickly with the phone companies to get those areas restored.

So state government is responding. We're requesting the federal assistance, and that will bring even more assistance to us. But certainly we've had a rather devastating storm, perhaps more devastating than the floods that hit the same area ten months ago, when we lost up to six people and we had some 15,000 people affected by the floods.

PHILLIPS: I was going to recall that time, Steve, wondering if this indeed was worse than that period of time and if the area was prepared for this in any way, learning a lesson from the last storm?

KAPPA: Yes. The loss of life and damages may have been greater had we not taken steps as an example, we had moved several hundreds of families out of the flood plain into temporary housing parks that the state and federal government built. There are over 350 families that were moved out of the flood plain and are living. We've also taken other measures to begin the process of stream cleaning. But certainly the fact that we've had nearly six inches of rain fall in that area in less than six hours in steep mountain terrain just certainly brought a devastating storm. Based on what we see in reports from the county, that the results of the damages are probably even greater than what we saw last year.

PHILLIPS: Steve Kappa, director of the West Virginia office of Emergency Services. We sure thank you for being with us this morning.

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