Estill County bed and breakfast recovering from high waters that impacted farmland

ESTILL COUNTY, Ky. (FOX 56) — Just off of Red Lick Road lies Station Camp Getaway.

The Estill County bed and breakfast welcomes hikers, bird watchers, horse race goers, and so on. Visitors get to enjoy nice scenery, looking out toward the farm.

“We have very few animals and so they’re like part of our family; they’re pets; we groom them every day,” Randall Arms said.

Randall and his wife, Nurys, own the BnB. They have Thoroughbreds, Suffolk Punch Horses, and even Highland Cattle, but it’s when heavy rain comes in that the fields the animals reside in turn into ponds.

The couple are not strangers to rainfall; they lived several years in Panama.

“I lived in Panama for 17 years, in the highlands of Panama and also in the lowlands, which are wetlands; they have 140in of rain a year, which is much more than we have anyplace here in the United States, so we were accustomed to seeing a lot of rain but not flooding,” Randall said.

They bought the property four years ago, and just a week later, a flood came through.

This year, they’ve already seen two major floods; about 80% of the 58-acre property was overtaken by water over the weekend, causing some of the animals to be moved up to higher ground.

“But the ones that suffered the most were the two Suffolk Punch horses; they were reduced to a real small area because the flood was basically coming up their fields,” Randall said.

Thankfully, with the way the home sits, water is less likely to get inside, but that isn’t the case for some of their neighbors.

Just a few miles down the road, it is impassable, with feet of water still flowing over it.

Randall said he knows his family is fortunate but hopes those who are dealing with more of an impact from the flooding get the help they need.

“I’m 74 years old; if I were to, you know, lose my entire house at this age, I can’t imagine starting all over again, and people are going through those types of hardships.” Randall said, “So, hopefully, there’s enough empathy in the communities as well as in the government to try to look for solutions for those people that are under those circumstances.”