Flood Survivor Joan Reed Works with EKY FLOOD Program to Help Others Impacted in Her Community

The rain sounded like water dropping from buckets onto the metal roof of Joan Reed’s house. It was 12:30 a.m. on July 28, 2022, and the downpour had continued nonstop since the day before.  

“That woke me up so I could not go back to sleep,” says Reed, a resident of the Whitco community of Letcher County, about three miles outside of the county seat of Whitesburg. “So, I just kept going and looking [outside] because the river is behind our house.” 

By 5 a.m., the North Fork of the Kentucky River had swelled so much that water was coming through their fence and into the yard. Reed woke up her husband and they decided to leave, still hoping that maybe the water wouldn’t reach their home. The rain had always stopped before.  

“This time it didn’t stop,” Reed says.  

They fled their home and wouldn’t be able to get back until 8 p.m. that evening when the river finally receded. But the water had already taken a toll, shifting most everything inside their house that wasn’t nailed down and leaving a layer of thick mud behind. The water also swept away their outside deck and destroyed a vehicle.  

“There was so much mud you couldn’t even stand in the house,” Reed says. “And at the time when we did leave, the driveways and main road were covered with rocks and debris, so we were lucky to get out when we did. Some other people weren’t that fortunate.” 

Reed and her husband were left picking up the pieces in the weeks following the flood, and more than five months later they’re still dealing with the effects.  

“You just can’t imagine the stress that you go through in the beginning,” she says. “It was like, what do we do? Where do we go? When do we start and how do we start?” 

By mid-December, Reed says they were close to being able to move back in. That was after throwing away possessions like furniture and gutting their house—hours upon hours of work with help from family members and others just to get to the point where they could begin a new normal. 

“We’re rebuilding,” she says. “We have come a long way.” 

Part of the recovery process for Reed also involved getting back to work in a way that would help others in her community. Reed and her husband were two of thousands of people across the region directly impacted by the flooding, and like others benefitted from numerous donations made by people in the community, something she remains grateful for today. 

Even with the assistance, she says rebuilding has been a monumental and costly task. The cost of materials, labor, and nearly everything else only increased in the weeks following the flood. So, when she heard about a program that could help her earn some additional income while also serving the community, it was something she knew she wanted to do.

While working in the initial recovery at her home, Reed says her family would regularly visit CANE Kitchen in Whitesburg, which provides free meals to the community, including flood survivors, volunteer workers, and others. While in line to pick up a meal, she started talking to Valerie Horn, chair of CANE Kitchen’s board of directors, who asked Reed if she would be interested in helping prepare and serve meals at the kitchen as a paid disaster relief worker. Not only would she get an opportunity to help others in the same way that others had helped her, but she’d also earn a wage to help offset some of the cost of rebuilding her home. 

“I said sure, because I need money to help build my house back, you know, put it back in order,” Reed says. “I’ve been here ever since, and I’ve enjoyed it.” 

Reed applied for a position through the EKY FLOOD program, an initiative of Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP) that provides funding for organizations like CANE Kitchen to hire workers to perform duties including cleanup and humanitarian assistance in flood-affected communities. By September, she was working through the week, at first helping prepare three meals a day for people in the community, something that was sorely needed. Reed estimates they were serving from 1,200 to 1,500 people per day.  

Since then, the kitchen’s service has decreased a bit, but still provides free lunches five days a week to anyone in need, including those who continue to grapple with the effects of the flood and haven’t been able to move into a permanent residence. In mid-December 2022, Reed was also counted among those people while she and her husband continued work on rebuilding their house while living in a travel trailer moved into the area by Team Kentucky. Even now, she adds, those trailers remain in high demand for local residents needing shelter.  

In the meantime, the need to help rebuild areas affected by the July 2022 flooding remains great, as does the need for individuals to help in that process. There is no shortage of work to be done across Eastern Kentucky, from Whitesburg and Hindman to Chavies and Jackson. And that’s never more apparent for Reed, who is looking forward to returning to a new normal in her own home. 

“When I walk in my house, it seems like forever since I spent a night there, but in reality it’s been almost six months,” she says. “But then, when you look at how everything is being rebuilt, we’ve got a long way to go.” 

Anyone wishing to apply for a position through EKY FLOOD can do so online at ekcep.us/ekyflood. The program is open to eligible individuals living within EKCEP’s 23-county service area. For more information visit ekyflood.com.  

EKY FLOOD (Finding Local Opportunities for Overcoming Disaster) is a program of Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program and funded by the Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet as part of a U.S. Dept. of Labor national dislocated worker grant. Eligibility for open positions will be determined in accordance with federal guidance related to DWG programs.  

EKCEP, a nonprofit workforce development agency headquartered in Hazard, Ky., serves the citizens of 23 Appalachian coalfield counties. The agency provides an array of workforce development services and operates the Kentucky Career Center JobSight network of workforce centers, which provide access to more than a dozen state and federal programs that offer employment and training assistance for job seekers and employers all under one roof. Learn more about us at http://www.ekcep.org, http://www.jobsight.org and http://www.facebook.com/ekcep.