Two people who died in flooding identified in Madison County
Two of the three people who died in weekend floods in Madison County have been identified.
According to the Madison County Coroner, John Powell, 57, drowned after his basement apartment flooded. Garnett Isbell, 73, died after his car was swept off the highway on Page Creek Road in Richmond in a presumed drowning. The third is a woman who remains unidentified. A fourth person died in Jackson.
Gov. Andy Beshear said in a Sunday afternoon update that teams are continuing the search and rescue phase while also starting damage assessments. The death toll remained at four people.
Beshear will make a request for both Public and Individual Assistance from the federal government. He had previously declared a state of emergency for Kentucky on Saturday.
Four dead in widespread flooding across Kentucky, Gov. Beshear confirms
“This flooding has devastated so many communities across our state and taken the lives of four children of God, gone too soon,” Beshear said in a statement. “While we are still in the search and rescue phase, we are also working quickly to survey damage to submit a request for federal assistance. People have lost their homes and so much more, and this type of support will be essential as we work to recover and rebuild together.”
More than 63 water rescues and evacuations were conducted. In Madison County, which was one of 18 localities that had declared a state of emergency, 17 households were sheltering and 320 homes were without water.
Other counties where states of emergency were declared are Bullitt, Clinton, Cumberland, Garrard, Grayson, Jackson, Jessamine, Meade, Mercer, Metcalf, Spencer and Wayne counties. Cities that declared a state of emergency are Albany, Brandenburg, Burkesville, McKee and Muldraugh.
Through executive order, the governor activated the state’s price gouging laws. Under that, Kentuckians can report price gouging online to the Office of the Attorney General for grossly overpriced goods and services. Beshear also signed an emergency order on Sunday to allow pharmacies in affected areas to issue emergency refills.
The deadly flooding is just one of a number of times in recent years where heavy rain has flooded homes and killed Kentuckians, with international researchers in one instance last year citing climate change as a driving force intensifying the storms in Kentucky. Human emissions of greenhouse gases spurring climate change are increasing the likelihood and frequency of heavy rainfall and flooding, according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Beshear has declared a state of emergency at least seven times over the past five years in part due to damaging floods. That included when some parts of Western Kentucky last year received more than a foot of rainfall in just four days in April 2025; when flooding killed 14 people in February 2025; and when catastrophic flooding in the summer of 2022 displaced thousands of people and killed more than 40 in Eastern Kentucky.