TRIADELPHIA — On June 14, 2025, Ashlie Howard was cooking bratwursts on the grill at her home on the east side of Triadelphia along U.S. 40.
It was a summer day, with a little bit of intermittent rain, Howard recalled. Her step-mother called, concerned there would be flooding.
“I thought she was overreacting. I was like, everything’s fine,” Howard said.
Howard took the brats off the grill, took them inside and fixed some plates for her and her children. When she came back outside, the creek behind her home had risen 6 feet.
That’s when the alerts went off on her phone, warning of the coming flood.
Howard acted fast, packing her kids in the car and raced to get away from the creek. She sped towards Roney’s Point, a high spot where some family lived. The water had risen over the road.
“I busted a u-ie on Route 40,” she said.
Fording through the waters, she made it to a motel up on the hill — without power, with nowhere to go, her family sought shelter in the lobby.
The flooding took nine lives and destroyed dozens of homes and businesses, including Howard’s, in the small town of Triadelphia. Ten months later, the community is still going through the slow and difficult process of rebuilding.
The flood, and the aftermath, have shown residents in Triadelphia all sorts of issues that lawmakers could address in the state. From identifying bridge ownership to additional training for volunteer firefighters, those who lived through the flood have ideas on what could help the next community.
Quicker action on the ground
At the beginning of the 2026 Legislative session, flooding was top of mind for lawmakers after Gov. Patrick Morrisey pitched an early warning system pilot program — something Howard agrees might’ve prevented her from having to risk driving her car through high water with her two kids and three cats.
But the measure failed to pass. Lawmakers did put $5 million into the Flood Resiliency Fund, the first time it’s ever been funded. That money will go to prevent or mitigate flooding. None of it went into the fund for recovery, leaving recovery efforts to the federal government.
That could be a problem in the future.
Since taking office in 2025, President Donald Trump has said he wants to reduce the role of FEMA in responding to disasters, leaving more of those responsibilities to the states.
Pastor Mike Palmer, of the Triadelphia United Methodist Church, has been involved in relief efforts since the morning after the floods. After spending all night camped in a gas station parking lot, he was able to get to his church in the middle of town, only to find it had been spared.
The preacher pulled out a grill and started flipping hamburgers for rescue workers, residents and anyone in need. Quickly, his church parking lot turned into one of several supply hubs in the area, handing out food, water, clothing and cleaning supplies.
Palmer now serves on the long-term recovery committee, a group of volunteers who help coordinate the rebuilding process.
The lack of a quick response — the President didn’t sign a disaster declaration until 38 days after the flood — is a sore spot for some of those who lived through it.
He said one thing that stands out to him is how long the recovery response takes. While he’s forgiving about the months-long delay for a FEMA Disaster Declaration — shaking his head, only saying, “it is what it is” — he does want to see quicker action on the ground in these types of events.
“I think some better legislation is needed to eliminate some of the red tape you have to go through. Something like this should come down to I think one phone call, and act on it now,” he said.
Twenty-five-year-old Niamh Coomey, who lives in Wheeling, said she volunteered for two weeks at the disaster site with a local group called Ohio Valley Mutual Aid. She helped coordinate volunteers for “muck-outs” — removing the unsanitary mud from houses to help prevent molding.
“There was kind of like a running joke — not really a joke — that we were kind of like the FEMA of the area when that happened, because FEMA wasn’t there — and that’s insane,” she said.
State Sen. Laura Chapman, R-Ohio, is running for reelection in the First District, which includes Triadelphia. She said she’s supportive of efforts like an early warning system and more funding.
“I will say that the governor does have a civil contingency fund for these types of situations, and so we need to make sure that’s funded in a healthy way and accessible in a timely manner,” she said.
Planning ahead
On an early April morning, Palmer drives around Triadelphia, cataloging the catastrophe. He points to houses, saying how this one is slated to be knocked down, then pointing to the next, saying the home owner is trying to rebuild.
He pulls his Ford sedan down a gravel road and points over at a metal bridge, connecting the town to six houses dotted across a steep hill.
“They had to walk their kids across the creek to get to school,” Palmer said.
Up that hill lives Sarah Hall. She runs a small homestead, raising chickens and produce for market. On the day of the flood, she watched two shipping containers careen down the stream and slam into the bridge she and her neighbors used to get on and off the hill for years.
“You could hear the steel screeching, like it echoed when that bridge broke — I’ll never forget that sound,” she said.
For three days, Hall and her family were stuck on the hill without running water or electricity. But the real work began after the flood waters receded. Rebuilding the bridge was tricky, because ownership of the bridge was unclear, since it was a remnant from an old coal mine.
Hall said she worked the phones up and down the line trying to get help from the state, federal and county governments. Messages went unanswered, or she was passed off to someone else who would tell her it wasn’t their problem.
In the meantime, Hall and her family had to schedule trips to the grocery store based on the level of the creek, always packing light to get their supplies up the hill. If heavy rains were forecasted, the family had to stock up.
“This really got me interested in politics, because I see how little our elected officials actually help,” she said.
Hall said the $5 million in the flood resilience fund is a good start, but she wants to see more resources directed toward preparing for floods. And she would like laws to clarify ownership on old bridges.
Democrat Shawn Fluharty, who currently serves in the House of Delegates and is now running for Chapman’s seat, said that money in the flood resiliency fund is just a start.
“We have to have the ability to stand up on our own and protect our people, and part of that is making sure the flood resiliency fund is properly funded,” Fluharty said.
Directly across the creek, at the Triadelphia Volunteer Fire Department, the rebuild process continues. Inside the station, bunk gear hangs on racks, with no lockers to put them in.
Assistant Fire Chief Kera Allietta said when the flood hit, it ripped through the back wall, sending gear down U.S. 40, the main thoroughfare in town.
“It ripped all of that metal up, and the water came in, and it got so high in that room that it ripped the whole wall out, and everything went right out the front,” she said. “Tool boxes, stuff you would never think should be moving like that.”
In the months following the flood, Allietta said the department leaned on other fire companies to fill the need while Triadelphia rebuilt. She said they had discussions about whether to move the station, which is butted up against the creek banks.
Triadelphia is one of many fire stations throughout the state built in a flood plain. She said while getting to higher ground is ideal, all available higher ground would’ve been outside the city limits, and the charter of her department mandates it remains in the town.
“We did all the things that we could do, as far as putting everything up now – the hot water tanks, the electrical and just making sure the drains are good, to try to mitigate any damage should something this bad ever happen again,” she said.
Allietta said looking back on the flood, she believes there needs to be more training for volunteer firefighters to work with FEMA.
“You start looking at specialized training with FEMA and emergency management issues,” she said. “I don’t believe we were as prepared as we could be.”
Joe Eddy, who is challenging Chapman in the Republican primary, said issues both big and small — from setting aside money in case the feds pull back from disaster management, to regulating the storage of shipping containers to prevent them becoming projectiles in a flood — require funding and implementing the existing state flood resiliency plan.
“It sounds like a really expensive program,” he said. “So is clean up, and so is loss of life.”
For people in Triadelphia, the surest bet for help is each other. Howard, the mother who braved the waters for safety, said she has since relocated to a more elevated part of town. While she received help from FEMA, she said most help came from the community itself.
“I had people just reach out. It’s just so many people like people on Facebook, people through the churches, people through OV Mutual Aid did a lot,” she said.
But some things can’t be replaced — pictures, baby clothes, momentos. Howard lost all those in the flood. An early warning system could’ve helped her at least grab a few of those things.
“If there was more time, I would have at least grabbed memorable things, my kids’ things,” she said. “But there was just no time, no time at all.”
