West Virginia is in the midst of a rash of deadly flooding, and one particularly dystopian video shows what appears to be a burning house floating through a creek in the town of White Sulphur Springs.
#Flood water pushes a burning #home down a creek in #WestVirginia. #wvwx
? Amanda Carper pic.twitter.com/zJSMe95nLk— AMHQ (@AMHQ) June 24, 2016
West Virginia MetroNews reports that the house was seen floating down Howard’s Creek on Thursday afternoon. In the video, someone can be heard saying, “Dad, watch out!”
The National Weather Service Office in Blacksburg, Virginia told MetroNews that the 24-hour rainfall total for White Sulphur Springs was 20cm. Two people have been killed by the flooding, including an eight-year-old, and another is still missing. Forty-four counties in West Virginia are reportedly under a state of emergency.
The apocalyptic conditions echo similar incidents in other parts of the world — Texas, for example, has seen some of the worst flooding in its history, and rivers in France rose to their highest levels in 50 years in June. In the latter case, the link between flooding and climate change has been fairly well documented. “One of the clearest signs of climate change, over much of the world, is the increase in the fraction of the rain that falls in the heaviest events,” Chris Fields, a climate scientist, told US News and World Report. Better batten down the hatches for the impending locust swarm, everyone.