But Priddy, who now leads the county’s Quick Response Team, said the euphoria quickly dissipated when officials learned that none of the 28 people had subsequently been referred to addiction resources or received treatment.

Taylor Wilson, 21, was the first known overdose on that August day. Her parents spent the next 41 days searching for treatment options. On the 42nd day, Wilson overdosed again and died from a mix of drugs that included fentanyl, carfentanil, furanylfentanyl, morphine, and hydrocodone.

“She was enrolled at Marshall,” Wilson’s mother, Leigh Ann Wilson, said. “She was going to be a librarian.” Wilson began taking prescription opioids around the time she entered college but was able to quit them. She was then introduced to heroin by a boyfriend.

Priddy said that later, reflecting on the lessons of Aug. 15, “our community really came together and said, ‘We’ve got to do something different.’”

Huntington now strives to be the “city of solutions.” Establishing the Quick Response Team in 2017 was a significant step. Within 24 to 72 hours after an overdose, the team — consisting of a peer recovery coach, paramedic, police officer, and faith leader — pays a visit to the person who overdosed or to their family. The team also checks on people whose family members fear they may be at risk of an overdose.

The number of ambulance calls to treat an overdose has decreased by 40% since the team was established. Overdose deaths in Cabell County peaked in 2017 with 202. At that time, Cabell had an overdose death rate that was more than double the rate of the next-highest county in West Virginia. According to the CDC, by June 2023 the number of overdose deaths in Cabell had dropped to 135 for the previous 12 months, while the numbers statewide continued climbing.

“We’ve expanded over these last few years to provide all kinds of social services along with referral to treatment,” Priddy said.

It is about “letting them know that we care,” said Sue Howland, a peer recovery coach with the Quick Response Team.

But the mixtures of drugs have presented new challenges. Robin Pollini, a substance misuse and infectious disease epidemiologist at West Virginia University, recently conducted studies of injection drug users in several cities in the state, including Huntington. She found that few people are using only opioids; rather, they’re using opioids and methamphetamine.

And the emergence of fentanyl has heightened the risks. Typically administered doses of the opioid withdrawal drug buprenorphine, one of Suboxone’s main ingredients, are less effective against fentanyl than other opioids. While the effects of heroin often last four to five hours, fentanyl’s high lasts a half-hour to an hour. Consequently, people share and reuse syringes more frequently, furthering the risk of HIV, hepatitis B and C, and endocarditis, said Jan Rader, director of Huntington’s Council on Public Health and Drug Control Policy.

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