WHITESBURG, Ky. (FOX56)–It’s been more than two weeks since deadly flooding hit Eastern Kentucky. The flooding took the lives of 39 people and washed dozens of homes from their foundations.
In Letcher County, many people there are still trying to dry out after the heavy rains dumped several feet of water in the area.
Monday, bottles were back clanging at Kentucky Mist Distillery in Whitesburg.
Moonshine production was put on a brief hold after historic flooding pushed several feet of water inside.
Colin Fultz has called Whitesburg home his whole life and made the switch from coal mining to distilling in 2015, a trade Fultz said he got from his grandfather.
But even after living in Letcher County for more than 40 years, nothing could prepare Fultz for the devastation he saw the morning of July 28th.
Fultz said, “We couldn’t get to anything here. It was unbelievable the flood waters. And we have seen it high before but nothing like that and it was just I just knew when I saw that just about all of town was hit by it.”
Inside the distillery, water wiped out boxes full of bottled moonshine ready to sell and flooded the showroom.
Fultz continued, “So everything that was below this label was lost. Even the bottles if you look back here. We store all of our bottles back in here, so all the bottles that we had that was actually 2 more pallets and we lost those 2 pallets of bottles.”
Fultz estimates he’s lost more than $150k in product from the flooding.
Over the past 2 weeks, Fultz and his team have been working 12 hours a day cleaning the distillery and prepping the machines to get back running.
“We just been working around the clock nonstop because the stores in Alabama and South Carolina need product, they’re getting low so we had to produce product in order to give it to them.”
