As temperatures begin to drop, many places are still assessing the damage.

A state lawmaker is also coordinating efforts to keep people safe.

State Senator Brandon Smith represents the 30th district in the Senate, which covers nine counties in eastern Kentucky.

His district was hit hard by flooding three years ago.

And now again, we caught up with him today as he surveyed the damage in Bradford County.

As our Kentucky floods coverage continues.

The family was at their house.

The flood came up so fast, they only had a chance to grab a backpack.

So you've got a family that has a two year old and a four year old and they race out of there.

And fortunately for them, they had a car there like it was an old maybe Wagoneer, but they were able to get in there.

But it only had enough gas to run for a couple of hours.

So they ran out and then they were there for two days.

There's no way to you to call or to let anybody know that you're stranded.

So it really depends on a neighbor noticing that you're missing or a family member that can't reach you.

And so we've had a lot of people and thank God for them that have taken notice that they haven't seen somebody for a while or have not heard from them.

And then they reach out and let us know about it.

But that's how we found this family.

And once we found them, there was a lot more.

And after I talked to some of the pilots that had flown in there, they had a lot of pickups in this particular region, which was Wolf Creek, I think before, where I may have had, you know, like maybe 30 or 40% of my district in certain areas, it's like 70 and 80.

And a lot of cases here that it's so, so broad, a lot more washed out, tree falls, water lines washed out sewer lines, taken out, a lot more structure failures.

We're seeing homes that are on the riverbank that have collapsed and fallen in major water lines that didn't collapse before, collapse now and pulled out and shut down entire cities because the water line was fell out.

So we're seeing a lot more devastation as far as that goes.

What we need now is we need heaters and we need propane heaters.

And when you do the heater, which is great, people donate those.

We also need the tanks and those big £100 tanks to do the best.

And so I need heat.

I need to be able to get some very portable sources of heat and fuel to be able to get into these places where people I've got the other power's out.

Some people have generators, some don't, and generators take gas.

So that's another part of it.

You know, we fight back for the the Army Corps of Engineers.

We've got lakes here, but corn, a car for work and others that were built for flood control.

But they've silted it.

And this is a story these things have filled in over the years, and they won't let us dredge them because the the environmentalists say we're going to kill the fish.

I'm honestly more worried about families at this point.

These these flood control projects that the Army Corps manages, these need to be dredged.

These streams, if you see the one back behind me here that I'm standing by and I wanted to make a point, this right here, it's capacity is greatly diminished because we can't dredge these.

And every time you put a piece of equipment anywhere near them, you get every kind of authority out there raising cane that you put a piece of equipment in the stream and maybe some grease or something off the wheel will fall.

And we have a crisis here where people are losing their livelihoods and their lives.

We need them to take action.

It's it's really difficult to have this happen to us now because we have just almost recovered from the previous flood to do it all over again.

And I'm really afraid this may be truly the last straws we hear.

The people are like, I just can't do this again.

Brandon So I'm hearing a lot of people say that I just don't have the heart to restore India.

And so I'm afraid that there could be a fall that we haven't seen yet.

And of course, our hearts go out to all of those who are affected.

Here's another way of putting this flooding event into perspective.

Cumberland Falls is sometimes called the Niagara of the South.

It's on the border of Whitley and McCreary County and southern Kentucky.

Now, here is what the falls typically look like.

Kentucky Edition shot this video over the summer.

Now, here's what the falls look like yesterday.

The drone video is from Ben Childers, who you've seen a lot of his footage from.

You can see just how swollen the Cumberland River is making.

The falls appear much smaller than normal.