Thank you for writing about this. My father’s family are from there and my cousin lost his home in Jenkins, KY in Letcher County and others with extensive damage. I know the Whitesburg, Hazard, Jenkins and Pikeville area well. It is a perfect storm the combined results from strip mining and mountaintop removal mining with climate change that is responsible for the severity of the floods. These are proud and hardworking people who have been and continue to be the victims of the coal industry. Here is a link to a wonderful WAPO article detailing the damage done by strip mining and mountaintop removal mining and the reforestation efforts going on. Nothing will change politically. No one really cares about poor people and never will. By the time it affects the rich, it will be too late.
Thank you for writing about this. My father’s family are from there and my cousin lost his home in Jenkins, KY in Letcher County and others with extensive damage. I know the Whitesburg, Hazard, Jenkins and Pikeville area well. It is a perfect storm the combined results from strip mining and mountaintop removal mining with climate change that is responsible for the severity of the floods. These are proud and hardworking people who have been and continue to be the victims of the coal industry. Here is a link to a wonderful WAPO article detailing the damage done by strip mining and mountaintop removal mining and the reforestation efforts going on. Nothing will change politically. No one really cares about poor people and never will. By the time it affects the rich, it will be too late.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/lifestyle/magazine/appalachia-kentucky-reforestation/