when eastern Kentucky was ravaged by floodwaters in June of 2022, the loss of life and property was catastrophic.

Another potentially catastrophic loss there was the region's history, as archives of materials from Appalachian residents about the area were buried under mud and muck.

But thanks to the heroic efforts of conservators and volunteers who love the area, a good chunk of that history is still in the process of being saved to this day after spending the last few years frozen solid.

[music playing] At the Hindman Settlement School in Hindman, Kentucky, the last weekend of June 2022 initially seemed like any other.

There was a writer's workshop on campus, and otherwise it was business as usual at the site, which sits beside the appropriately named Troublesome Creek.

But then, the rains came.

[rain pouring] What's been described as the deadliest natural disaster in the region in 80 years rained down on eastern Kentucky.

The floodwaters took 45 lives and thousands of homes.

The writers at Hindman were awoken in the middle of the night, initially told just to move their cars because Troublesome Creek was rising.

It quickly became much worse.

You know, once the power went out, the only way that they could watch the rise of the water was by the lightning flashes.

And that was how they judged.

And they would see dumpsters and propane tanks and pools and cars and houses float by.

I think what was most horrific at the time was that we didn't know the full scale of it.

I knew what was happening here on campus to my friends and colleagues and teachers and mentors, but I didn't know the death toll even here in Knott County or what was unfolding in Breathitt County and Letcher County and other places.

The school became a literal shelter from the storm, quickly evolving into emergency housing, a donation center, and a place where people could get three meals a day for free, all done with no water or power for several days.

It didn't take long for staff at the school to know the floods had taken more than a human toll.

Their historical archives of life in the area appeared destroyed.

This is actual video of what it looked like at the school days after the flood.

Notice the high-water mark on the wall.

It was dark, and it smelled terrible.

And I walked in, and the first thing I noticed was all the books were knocked off the shelves because the water was 52 or 54 inches high in the archives.

When the floods happened, we had multiple rushes of water.

So, we had underground gas tanks and septic tanks that imploded in different areas around here, and that all fell into here.

So, it is not uncommon to get a whiff of gasoline or diesel, human waste.

Like, you'll get that smell.

The staff immediately reached out to archivists to see if there was something, anything, that could be done to save the collection.

Time is of the essence.

You've got 72 hours.

It's July.

Things are gonna to start molding.

The damage is gonna to be immediate.

And so, we put out this desperate call on social media saying anybody who can help, help us.

And some of the first people on the ground were actually on their way to Appalshop in Whitesburg, but Appalshop was literally still underwater, so they couldn't get there.

And when the floodwaters at Appalshop in Whitesburg receded, the scene was also one of total devastation.

When we all went in there as a team, you couldn't even walk in.

It was very slippery.

I mean, honestly, it was hard to even get around in there.

A lot of people wore, like, the Tyvek suits, you know, wearing masks, gloves, all that.

It was just straight nasty.

At both places, it became clear that some of their collections could be saved through a novel approach.

Freezing the items.

By doing this, the threat of mold growth is effectively stopped.

That bought everyone time to get back on their feet, at which point they could slowly start thawing items so important to the region's history.

Alex Brooks is a Lexington-based conservator, one of only two in Kentucky.

He's currently working to preserve documents damaged at Appalshop.

Brooks got in his car and headed to eastern Kentucky as the floodwaters were receding.

His background was in restoring books from medieval times, but he knew he wanted to help, and he knew freezing culturally important items were key to saving them.

Freezing the paper made sense because that basically presses pause.

And if you can freeze a book that's completely waterlogged, then it can stay frozen basically indefinitely until you have time to unfreeze it and then work on it.

Brooks immediately tried to get freezer trucks to the region to save the materials.

The problem was that there wasn't a single freezer truck in the area because all the freezer trucks, like commercial freezer trucks, were used for bodies.

I was on the phone with someone that has a lot of connections with shipping people in the area, and when he told me, like, “I'd love to help you, but all of the freezer trucks are being used for bodies,” that struck me and really affected me.

Several years after the flood, the Heinemann Settlement School's archivist, Sarah Insalaco, is still thawing out items.

Their success to date has enabled them to restore more than 80% of the documents in their collection.

It's a tedious process.

For paper goods, she goes page by page, wiping down the paper with hydrogen peroxide.

The books and documents may be stained, but they are salvageable.

Mold tends to grow where it's the warmest, which is the spine of the book.

So, that's where you're mainly gonna find mold, as well as when you close it like this, the creases and the bottom bindings.

It's a far more complex situation at Appalshop.

Film and videotape require many more technical processes to be saved.

When you walk into the trailer that houses their remaining items to be thawed, you're immediately struck by the smell.

As Insalaco said, it's an overpowering mix of fuel, human waste, and mud.

The process there is much slower and relies mainly on big out-of-state labs like Iron Mountain to do the work.

Terry says some three years after the flood, they've only unthawed about one-fifth of the collection they hoped to save.

But what has been saved shows promise.

Film is, like, durable.

It's wild how durable it is.

But, you know, we're still experiencing things like emulsion loss and flood muck that just will not come off of a tape, and therefore you can't get a clear picture or clear sound off of it.

Years after floodwaters forever changed the face of Eastern Kentucky, important parts of its history sit in freezers waiting to be brought back to life.

It costs money to do this work, and Terry at Appalshop says a number of the grants they were using to preserve this heritage have evaporated.

But between the dedication of volunteers and the efforts of staff and conservators like Brooks, the legacy of Eastern Kentucky, as told by Eastern Kentuckians, will hopefully live on.

This is a region that's been historically denigrated.

It's a region that's had a lot of stories told about it from the outside, and not always with the greatest sensitivity or affection.

So, these two places that were majorly affected by the flood are repositories for a cultural heritage that's told from their point of view, which is really rare and very valuable.

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