Local mining company facing September trial for its role in E. Ky disaster
Editor’s note: This story was published in the Thursday, July 3, 2014, edition of The Mountain Advocate, a weekly newspaper published in Barbourville that covers Knox and surrounding counties. The story recounts the disastrous June 2011 flood that struck the community of Kayjay in southeastern Knox County. Bardstown-based Nally & Hamilton is being sued by a group of the flood’s survivors and estates of two victims, alleging the company’s mining practices contributed to the disaster.
By Melissa Newman, editor
The Mountain Advocate
KAYJAY, Ky, Thursday, July 3, 2014 — Wilma Pate can no longer speak clearly but a jury will finally hear her story.
This file photo from The Mountain Advocate shows the remains of Wilma Pate’s mobile home which was swept from its foundation by the June 2011 flood in the Knox County community of Kayjay. Pate was pinned in the wreckage for hours; her son died in the flood. Nally & Hamilton of Bardstown is being sued in Knox Circuit Court. Photo courtesy of The Mountain Advocate. Click to enlarge.
Pate and her son, the late Donnie Joe Pate, are two of the first victims’ names echoed when folks talk about the summer of 2011 and the Kayjay flood.
Pate, now 83, survived, but floodwaters swept her son, 55-year old Donnie, away as he pushed through powerful, rushing waters to try and save his mother.
She, like so many others just one day before summer’s official arrival, was asleep in her bed when the storm cracked open clouds above the mountain community.
Some called it a cloudburst; others named it a torrential downpour, but those living at the base of the mountain turned eyes toward Nally & Hamilton Enterprises, a Bardstown-based coal company cited for unacceptable mine reclamation practices.
Much of the water and mud, residents say, which killed dreams, family legacies and even neighbors, came from a Nally & Hamilton silt pond looming high above them on the mountain. Coal mining operations often use these ponds as designated areas where contaminated water with suspended sediment, because of mining activity, is contained.
Homes passed down from generations before lay splintered on the ground where life and laughter once occupied the now empty space. Remnants of homes that once were – rock chimneys, crippled utility poles and kudzu-smothered foundations — stick out of the dirt, as if taking a last stand. Other homes have vanished – only grass, weeds and clover left behind.
Throat cancer has taken Pate’s ability to speak clearly and a sliver of plastic that was wedged in her ear as she was pulled from her splintered home has taken her hearing.
Wilma Pate, shown sitting between her daughter Coi Wild and a court reporter, survived the summer 2011 Kayjay catastrophic flash flood, but water swept her son, 55-year old Donnie, away as he pushed through powerful, rushing waters to try and save his mother. Pate is shown here during her court deposition. The case against Bardstown, Kentucky coal company Nally & Hamilton is scheduled for a jury trial on Sept. 22 in Knox Circuit Court. There are nearly 80 plaintiffs listed in the case files. Photo courtesy of The Mountain Advocate. Click to enlarge.
Pate’s daughter, Coi Wild from Northern Kentucky, has been her mother’s voice during the three-year legal battle and will interpret her mother’s words again. This time to those who will pass judgment on Nally & Hamilton during the civil trial set for Sept. 22 in Knox Circuit Court.
Pate’s attorney, Ned Pillersdorf, who is also representing the almost 80 other Kayjay residents, has listened to hundreds of hours of testimony spanning a 30-year legal career. Pate’s story, he said, shakes everyone who hears it.
“It was one of the most emotional depositions I’ve heard,” Pillersdorf said. “At one point the court reporter was crying.”
The story, Pillersdorf is referring to, is representative of everyone who awoke that dark early morning on June 21, 2011. Many of the words are the same only different voices, different faces. Water gushed off the mountain and out of the sky, filling nearby Wolf Pen Creek. Residents then say, run-off from the mountain and the Nally & Hamilton silt pond merged with the creek water to create a surging mass that transformed KY Hwy. 225, the only access road to their homes, into a raging river carrying with it rock, mud, silt, trees, branches, vegetation, and coal. At around 3 a.m. Kayjay residents started to see their little corner of the world torn apart as they fought for their lives.
Pate was trapped inside her mobile home as it was swept off its foundation and carried away by rising floodwaters. Her home, with her still inside, was crumpled under the nearby creek bridge. Pate was trapped there for hours before rescuers found her.
Artemus firefighter Bruce Logan said they first feared that Pate had died. “We figured she was somewhere there in the rubble, but we thought she was dead. It was a surprise to all the firefighters that she was still alive. The debris had pushed her up enough to keep her head out of water,” Logan said in a previous interview. “It was a miracle.”
Logan said it took about two hours for rescuers to find Pate. “We had to remove all the debris by hand,” he said.
Rescuers later located Donnie Pate’s body at around 9 a.m. about a half-mile downstream near the Warren Camp community of Kayjay.
Wild and Pate were contacted but did not want to comment on the case or its history.
Melissa Newman is an author and award-winning journalist who calls Knox County home. She teaches journalism at Eastern Kentucky University and is a former editor of The Kentucky Standard. She is the author of “Growing Up Wilder,” “House of Cleaving” and “Sister Blackberry.”
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