The Flooding in Eastern Kentucky, July 2022

Like so many people, I am saddened and horrified by the devastation in Eastern Kentucky brought on by unprecedented rainfall and flooding that hit the region July 26-28, 2022. If you are able to donate to help people whose lives have been completely torn apart, please, please do so! Kentucky Governor Beshear has established the Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief Fund to assist those impacted by the floods and the severe weather system. All donations to the Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief Fund are tax-deductible and donors will receive a receipt for tax purposes after donating. Other donation possibilities can be found here. 

Front page of the local paper, with an amazing and heartbreaking aerial image by Ryan C. Hermens, Photographer for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

I feel like I have been explaining the topography and historic development of the area to so many people the last few days – folks that live far from Kentucky and have no idea what a holler running alongside a usually sleeping stream is like.

As I waded in a creek on our farm with  my children yesterday, I tried to make sense of it for them – pointing out how the land lies flat and even on either side of the creek, and that valleys by rivers or creeks are often the only level ground in parts of Eastern Kentucky. And for generations, that is where people have built and lived.

The Jackson Federal Building, circa 1914, originally housed both the Federal Court and the Jackson, Kentucky Post Office. It was turned into Federal Place Apartments in an adaptive-reuse project by AU Associates of Lexington, Kentucky.

You can’t very well build on the side of a steep  mountain. The bottoms are where people have settled for hundreds of years.

See Jackson, at far right in this 1951 topographic map? And see how every waterway is a life line of people and buildings?

It’s not just roads, bridges, and buildings that lie crumpled and disjointed after the floodwaters raged. The very culture of Eastern Kentucky is in danger – Appalshop, which has chronicled life in Appalachia since 1969, is facing the loss of its valuable archives.* Water poured into the first floor of Appalshop’s main building in downtown Whitesburg,  Kentucky. Irreplaceable documents and snippets of community history have likely been destroyed.

But in a rare bit of good news to emerge from the riling and deadly flood waters,  Appalshop tweeted just two hours ago that they set up a temporary office!

The handsome W. E. Cook Building, circa 1914, was built by Italian stone masons.

I don’t live in Eastern Kentucky, despite living just east of Lexington, Kentucky (there are those people in Central Kentucky to whom anything east of New Circle Road means the mountains.  The folks who bemoan our country’s collective ignorance of geography and history should know that it’s not a new problem, but a facet of education that has been been neglected for generations. I just smile and bless their hearts when some people ask me “where’s that?”).

So while I am not physically impacted by this tragedy, what happened impacts us all. Our weather isn’t normal. And it’s not going to get better.

An early 20th century farmstead in the bottom land along Indian Creek in Jackson County, Kentucky.

Since 2015, I’ve been traveling across Eastern Kentucky for work, usually as part of cell tower construction projects. I’ve been so fortunate to see parts of Kentucky I never would have visited otherwise.

Each trip is a long day.

Undated postcard of the historic courthouse in Jackson, Breathitt County, Kentucky. Image from the
Kentucky Historical Society, Postcards from Kentucky, Graphic 26.

I can count on it taking at least two hours to get to sites in Floyd County or Perry County. Pikeville is easily a three hour trip one-way.

But each trip is so worth it – for the buildings I find, the people I meet, and the joy of learning more about our diverse, beautiful Commonwealth.

A small front gable house along Wolf Creek in Breathitt County, Kentucky.

I’ve taken many photographs and wandered many twisty roads. There are creeks and streams everywhere. Many small communities lie between a tangle of roads, creeks, and railroad beds. I can’t begin to imagine what’s like to see those ribbons of water become deadly torrents that rush and twist and destroy everything in the way.

My heart breaks when I think of those four young children torn away from their parents by the water. It’s unbearable.

Two historic commercial buildings in Hindman, Knott County, Kentucky. The Appalachian School of Luthiery, which has been such a positive force in the community, has been destroyed by the floodwaters.

The skies are still gray in Kentucky this Monday morning, and the weather forecast does not look good. While I usually write about historic buildings, today all I can think of is how we need the rain to stop for a while. And maybe, when the sun comes out again, people can think about rebuilding their lives.

*The organization was one of ten Community Film Workshops started by a partnership between the federal Office of Economic Opportunity and the American Film Institute.