Five Years Into Recovery, Eastern Kentucky Rebuilds Differently

Along several creek bottoms in Eastern Kentucky, new homes are going up on higher ground than the ones they replaced, part of a rebuilding effort that has stretched years longer than most residents initially expected.

Local officials say the recovery has moved in phases: emergency housing first, then permanent construction, and now a longer effort to relocate some neighborhoods away from the most flood-prone stretches of the region's narrow valleys. That relocation work has been slow and, for some longtime residents, painful, since it often means leaving land that has been in a family for generations.

Rebuilding With Resilience in Mind

State and local housing officials involved in the effort say new construction standards now account more explicitly for flood risk than in the past, including elevated foundations and, in some cases, entirely new home sites chosen specifically for their distance from waterways.

"People don't want to leave their community, they want their community moved somewhere safer," one regional housing coordinator said, describing efforts to cluster new housing developments close enough that neighbors from flooded hollows can remain neighbors in their new location.

Progress has not been uniform across the region. Some counties have moved more quickly than others in securing land and funding for new housing sites, and infrastructure such as roads and water lines has in some cases lagged behind home construction. Local officials say they expect recovery-related construction to continue for at least several more years, even as the immediate emergency response has long since ended.

For many residents, the rebuilding has become less about restoring what existed before and more about deciding what a safer version of home should look like going forward.