This article is re -published with Conversation under Creative Commons license.
On Valentine’s Day 2025, weighty rains He started to fall In the rural part of Appalachia. Within a few days, the inhabitants of Eastern Kentucky observed how the river level increases and exceeds the level of flood. Conducted emergency teams Over 1000 water saves. Hundreds, if not thousands of people Shiftedand whole business districts filled with mud.
For some, for the third time in four years their homes flooded, and the process of getting rid of damaged furniture, cleaning mud and again begins again.
Floods were destroyed by companies and houses in Eastern Kentucky in February 2021, July 2022, and now February 2025. Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina hit an even larger scale of destruction in September 2024, when Hurricane Helene Rainfall and floods Consumed cities and washed parts Main motorways.
Each of these events was considered a “thousand -year flood”, with a chance to set 1 in 1000 in a given year. And yet they are they happen more often.
Floods emphasized Resistance of the local population Work for joint survival at rural appalachia. But they also revealed deep sensitivity From the communities, many of which are located along the streams at the base of the hills and mountains with bad emergency warning systems. Since brief -term cleansing leads to long -term recovery, residents can face the discouraging barriers that leave many before the same flood risk.
Revealing the housing crisis
Over the past nine years, I have been conducting health research in rural areas and poverty in Appalachia. This is a often sophisticated region Painted with wide brush strokes That he misses geographical, socio -economic and ideological diversity.
Appalachia is House for a vibrant cultureA violent sense of pride and a robust sense of love. But it is also marked by the ubiquitous background decreasing coal industry.
There is a significant local inequality, which is often omitted in the region presented as one -dimensional. Poverty levels are indeed high. In Perry, Kentucky, where one of the largest cities of Kentucky, gambling, is located, Almost 30 percent the population lives under the federal border of poverty. But Average income from the highest 1 percent Employees in Perry are almost 470,000–17 times more than the average income of the remaining 99 percent.