KY And WV Both Face Extreme Flooding; Both States Have Plans To Deal W. It; Neither Used Them

[hatrack]

When four and a half feet of water engulfed the town of Fleming-Neon, Kentucky, in July, fire chief Carter Bevins found himself in an unfamiliar position. “We were helpless,” he said. The volunteer firehouse, which sits on a small road directly in front of Wright Fork creek, was surrounded by a chest-high wall of water. The phone rang again and again, with residents begging for help. But Bevins and his team couldn’t open the door. All the firefighters could suggest to panicked residents was that they get as high as they could. “We try to take any situation and neutralize it, make it for the better. How you gonna do that when you can’t even get out of your own building?” Bevins asked.

Fleming-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. 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. But for years, officials have ignored their own, completed plans for how to prevent these kinds of disasters from happening in the first place. West Virginia has had a comprehensive flood mitigation plan on the books since 2004, though officials have taken little concrete action to implement it. And in Kentucky, extensive regional plans spell out how communities could decrease the potential for flood damage.

EDIT

West Virginia is very familiar with the type of planning required to protect residents from the worst impacts of floods. 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. 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. Yet it was never implemented by any of the state agencies that would have had jurisdiction over parts of the plan.

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Calls to dozens of emergency management officials for cities and counties in eastern Kentucky hit by the most recent flood revealed that most did not know what their local flood mitigation plan was, or that their Area Development District was the entity that had made it. Michelle Allen, executive director of the Kentucky River Area Development District, said that once the plan is created, the district communicates regularly with local officials about progress and implementation. She also noted that the day before the flood devastated eastern Kentucky, the district had hired a regional disaster coordinator to in part assist municipalities with follow-up. But ultimately, the municipalities themselves are responsible for implementing any flood mitigation efforts: a process that’s more difficult if they don’t know that a plan exists.

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https://grist.org/accountability/west-virginia-kentucky-officials-ignored-plan-for-catastrophic-floods/

[keithbvadu2]

1. Who had control/authority over these plans? The Uvalde school police?

Who had control/authority over these plans? The Uvalde school police?