Floods in Kentucky have wiped out homes and businesses, and engulfed small towns. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, east Kentucky includes seven of the 100 poorest counties in the nation.
Evelyn Smith lost everything in the floods that devastated eastern Kentucky, saving only her grandson's muddy tricycle. But she's not planning to leave the mountains that have been her home for 50 years.
For many people who lost their homes, connections with family and neighbours will only grow in importance in the aftermath of the floods, which wiped out homes and businesses and engulfed small towns. Still, in a part of the state that includes seven of the 100 poorest counties in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, they may not be enough for people already living on the margins.
He thinks some people who can afford to leave will do so, with younger people -- less likely than their elders to try to rebuild where they are -- more likely to look for jobs elsewhere. "The coal business has been petering out and a lot of people have left," Holliday said. "The people who are left live paycheque-to-paycheque or on Social Security, and most of them live in mobile homes on the very edge of the economy."
"Decades upon decades of strip mining and mountaintop-removal mining leaves the land unable to help absorb some of that runoff during periods of high rainfall," said Emily Satterwhite, director of Appalachian Studies at Virginia Tech. "As soon as I stepped off my steps it was waist high," she said. She is staying with two of her dogs at Jenny Wiley State Park in Prestonsburg, about 20 minutes from her home."I know our whole basement is destroyed," she said. "But I feel very, very lucky. I don't think it will be a total loss."Hurd's home also flooded in 2009 on Mother's Day, nearly destroying everything inside.
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