Mark Peluchette, president of Liberty Distributors, joined the AccuWeather Early show to describe how, in a matter of minutes, they "went from just a little trickle of water" to a "river of water that was probably 50 yards wide" during the recent flash flooding in Triadelphia, West Virginia.
00:00My floodwaters tore through Triadelphia, West Virginia, over the weekend, sending four feet of water into a family business in minutes.
00:10Liberty Distributors, a local packing and supply company, suffered serious damage.
00:17Here to share what happened is Mark Palcetti. He is the president of Liberty Distributors.
00:23Thank you so much for being with us for this morning here.
00:27If you could describe to us what happened Saturday night and just how quickly the water did rise and what what your son witnessed.
00:36Got someone to ask us to look at our video cameras about eight o'clock, eight thirty, somewhere around that time frame.
00:44My son was in the neighborhood. He came by and probably in a matter of three to four minutes,
00:50we went from just a little trip of water to probably a river of water that was probably 50 yards wide and maybe four feet deep.
01:00That came probably within, I don't know, five, ten minutes tops.
01:05Wow. And what was the extent of the damage to your two buildings and what have you been able to salvage so far?
01:13Where? We in our main building, we have probably four feet of water.
01:22Max, Max, we have probably four feet of water here.
01:25We got excuse me. I'm sorry. We got we got construction going on and we're trying to move stuff.
01:31But we got about four feet of water all through our first floor in the main warehouse.
01:34Our warehouse is probably 60,000 square feet.
01:36We probably lost a thousand thousand to fifteen hundred skids of product.
01:42We lost all of our our offices.
01:46We lost four trucks, all of our forklift equipment and pickers.
01:51Oh, I mean, just this.
01:54I can't we don't even know we were trying to muck through it right now.
01:57We don't even know the extent of all the damages we have.
01:59What are others in your town going through?
02:04Have you been able to speak to neighbors and other friends that may be affected?
02:08Yeah, right now, our whole community.
02:10This is a small, really tight community, maybe five hundred to a thousand people here.
02:16And one of our truck drivers lost his mom, just lives about a quarter of a mile down the road from us.
02:23I have a friend of mine who lives right up there, maybe a half a mile from me.
02:30He had two trucks that got pushed through the water that landed in his house.
02:34Many of our business community lost everything.
02:38Good friend of mine, the Zambito family, they they lost their entire business.
02:44We'll we'll rebuild.
02:45We'll we'll whatever.
02:46But we just don't even know the extent of the dollars or the extent of our damage at this point in time.
02:50We're just trying to get through it.
02:52Yeah, that was my next question.
02:54You've been in business for 37 years.
02:56What does recovery look like for you and your family?
03:00Well, we have 75 people who work out on this building, so we're going to we're going to be back stronger than ever.
03:06This is our not our first flood, but this I've never seen anything like that.
03:09I've never seen destruction like this before.
03:12And the speed of which it happened in that building behind me, there's probably six to eight inches of just mud that we got to get through.
03:20So we don't have any power.
03:22We just got water back this morning.
03:24We don't have any gas.
03:27Power would be great if they can restore power.
03:29We can do a lot more stuff.
03:30But right now, everybody's pinched in.
03:33We've had the community's been asking.
03:35I have friends texting.
03:37How can I help?
03:38We got people dropping us food, water.
03:40So it's the community is really it's a great little tight community wheeling area.
03:45And, you know, we're proud to be from here and we'll be back.
03:49Really quickly, can you describe to our viewers the power of the water that came through your area?
03:56Well, when it picks up a whole tractor trailer and drives it a mile down the down the road and or a backhoe to waste 30 tons and it takes that stuff and moves it behind there and it moved our trucks.
04:09It moved product that was in our warehouse.
04:12It just hold thousand, two thousand pound skids.
04:14It just I have product that was out here on our road, 50 yards from our building that it just pushed right through the walls of the of the doors of our warehouse.
04:24So it's it's a force that you can't even imagine.
04:28And, Mark, you get your fair share of weather through West Virginia.
04:30I'm assuming you've never seen anything like this.
04:33Nothing, nothing, nothing like this.
04:36Nothing.
04:37Mark Pelchetti, president of Liberty Distributors.
04:41Thank you so much for joining us.
04:42We know you'll come back stronger than ever.
04:46And our best wishes are for you and everyone in your town.
