![]() ![]() Weeks later, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported how the state had taken no action on the earlier plan. Here, the effects of this more frequent flooding were most recently obvious in 2016, when a catastrophic flood damaged or destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, and killed 23 people. Hermens / Lexington Herald-Leader / Tribune News Service via Getty Images 1, 2022, now covered in a layer of mud from last weeks floods. Shana Banks, left, nurse practitioner at the MCHC Isom Medical Clinic, and Jennifer Shepherd, a medical assistant, look at the front office of the clinic in Isom, Kentucky, on Monday, Aug. ![]() Yet it was never implemented by any of the state agencies that would have had jurisdiction over parts of the plan. The plan was loaded with actionable suggestions on floodplain and wastewater management, ordinance enforcement, better flood warning systems, improved building codes, and a tougher approach to resource extraction. In 2004, a 20-agency task force produced a 365-page Statewide Flood Protection Plan, the result of generous federal and state contributions and four years of work. West Virginia is very familiar with the type of planning required to protect residents from the worst impacts of floods. That makes infrastructure projects like dams and floodwalls, as well as levees, updates to buildings, and emergency notification systems all the more important. ![]() The increased frequency and severity of storms means that Kentuckians and West Virginians are facing more potential damage on a regular basis. “You can kind of get an idea if it’s going to happen in Kentucky, but precisely where you just don’t know until you start to see that line up on the radar, and then you can put out the warning but oftentimes then it can be too late,” he said. These storms are so narrow that it’s difficult for climatologists to accurately predict where they’re going to turn up until they actually happen, as if they were tornadoes, Law says. Due to temperature-driven changes in the jet stream, which steers storms, there have been more “training” events in the region: where very narrow yet intense storms line up like cars on a railroad track and follow each other. Part of a state climatologist’s job is to use this data to predict future climate trends.īut Law says that global warming is also making floods like the recent one in eastern Kentucky harder to pinpoint in advance. Marshall University professor and State Climatologist Kevin Law says he’s seen an increase in precipitation in West Virginia and much of the region since he began his role in 2008. How coal mining increased East Kentucky’s flood riskĬlimate change makes the region more prone to sudden, intense storms that drop a lot of rain, as an increase in atmospheric temperature increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, making precipitation, and in particular flooding, more likely.How Kentuckians want to hold coal companies accountable for deadly flooding.How a clean energy future is colliding with mining’s dark past.In these cases, planning and taking action haven’t gone hand-in-hand. And in Kentucky, extensive regional plans spell out how communities could decrease the potential for flood damage. West Virginia has had a comprehensive flood mitigation plan on the books since 2004, though officials have taken little concrete action to implement it. The same is true right across the border in West Virginia, where catastrophic flooding has become a regular occurrence for people in communities from McDowell to Kanawha.īut for years, officials have ignored their own, completed plans for how to prevent these kinds of disasters from happening in the first place. How you gonna do that when you can’t even get out of your own building?” Bevins asked.įleming-Neon wasn’t the only community to find itself in this position: With vast portions of eastern Kentucky still reeling from the July flooding that ruined thousands of buildings, displaced hundreds and killed 39 people, elected officials are focusing on disaster response. “We try to take any situation and neutralize it, make it for the better. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. ![]()
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