Appalachians Are Trapped in a Disastrous Cycle of Flooding and Rebuilding

On Valentine’s Day 2025 , heavy rains started to fall in parts of rural Appalachia .

Floods wiped out businesses and homes in eastern Kentucky in February 2021 , July 2022 , and now February 2025 .

Each of these events was considered to be a “ thousand-year flood,” with a 1 -in-1,000 chance of happening in a given year .

The floods have highlighted the resilience of local people to work together for collective survival.

The Kentucky Department for Local Government earmarked almost $300 million of federal funding to build new, flood-resilient homes in eastern Kentucky .

Available higher ground tends to be located on former strip mines, which require careful geotechnical surveying and sometimes structural reinforcements.

For-profit developers have largely avoided many counties in the region.

The need for homes on higher grounds has only expanded, and the wait continues.

With hundreds more people now displaced by the most recent flood, the need for higher-ground homes has expanded.

The wait continues for those displaced by flooding continues, and more people are still waiting for help.