How bad was it?

Kentucky lawmakers heard today from two of their eastern Kentucky colleagues about the devastating floods from earlier this month, and how much cleanup could cost.

Their insights lead off tonight's legislative update.

In my home county, I live in Pike County, which I think has been determined to be the, the worst hit by the flooding Pike County currently has lost 11 bridges, one of which was a fairly recent construction that, was over $1 million.

They're preliminary estimates, for the county roads in Pike County alone, probably exceed $50 million.

And that includes a lot of bike erosion collapses.

There's, the the school system, the Pike County school system remains closed as as well as the Pikeville Independent school system for the county.

A much larger area.

Pike County, least 787mi².

It may be yet.

Several weeks.

The road to the Elkhorn City elementary and middle schools.

Complete loss, complete collapse.

Several of those schools are currently used as shelters right now for people that have lost individual homes.

Mr. Chairman, I guess I lived in Pike County since 1985, and I've.

I've never seen anything like it in my life.

Their preliminary numbers are mind boggling.

In my five counties, it's over 30 million.

You know, that's roads and bridges and, businesses affected in those five counties.

Looks like 60 businesses.

Over 500 homes.

Some of the concerns and worries that, that elected officials in those counties are thinking about now.

You know, how many times is FEMA going to come in and pay those people there?

You know, once they do that a few times, they finally start mitigating and buying them out and and moving them out.

So, you know, that's concerned our local government governments have now that, we're going to lose people naturally.

Week will be great, but that's very expensive.

But something that would help us tremendously if we could clean drainage, cut trees on our rivers and banks and, would give a lot.

And I think it would, it wouldn't alleviate all the flooding, of course, but it would sure would.

It sure would help a lot.

There's going to be a lot of people that, are going to, to, to live maybe months and years before they get their lives together.

And, you know, when considering the already struggling economy with some of the downturn in the coal industry and other traditional means of employment, this has been very devastating to the region.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was in Kentucky today to provide an update on the federal response to the flooding event.

She joined Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.

We'll have more about that tomorrow on Kentucky Edition.