Letcher Countian Forest Madden Joins in Flood Recovery Efforts with Cajun Navy Thanks to EKY FLOOD Program
Forest Madden is standing on a street in Millstone, Ky., preparing to help remove a ceiling from a house that was damaged during widespread flooding on July 28. It's late October, nearly three months after the flood, and the crew he’s working with to provide cleanup services for flood survivors is keeping busy.
Forest Madden stands in front of a house in Millstone, Ky., damaged by flood waters in July 28, 2022. Madden enrolled in the EKY FLOOD program after the flood and began providing cleanup services with Cajun Navy.
Madden, a native of Letcher County, began volunteering after the flood, helping as he could at distribution centers in the county where flood survivors could access supplies and resources as they began the recovery process. Not long after that he enrolled in a new program called EKY FLOOD, an initiative of Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP) that covers wages for companies or organizations to hire disaster relief workers who provide cleanup and humanitarian assistance.
After applying for an EKY FLOOD position, Madden received an offer with Cajun Navy, a disaster relief organization based in Louisiana that provides services in communities following natural disasters like the flooding in Eastern Kentucky. The crew Madden works with is helping survivors with cleanup and demolition inside homes damaged by the flood.
Madden says they’re working from a list of requests for assistance, and there hasn’t been any shortage of work so far, as the damage from the flood waters stretched across communities and left a lot of people with a need to tear down and rebuild.
“We’re mucking out houses that need the mud took out,” Madden says. “Sometimes we’ll take the floors out if they need the floors done. If it’s real bad and the water really got into them, we’ll take the walls up wherever the mold is, take the insulation out.”
Prior to the flood, Madden was employed and doing soil testing for the mining industry, but says work was slowing down as the demand for mining in the region decreased. As a result, he was looking for work when he heard about an opportunity through the EKY FLOOD program, which in turn provided him an opportunity to help with recovery efforts in his native Letcher County.
“Just like everybody, I care about the people that I live around and whenever something like this really happens, there ain’t much you can do except for clean up the mess and kind of try to put pieces back together,” Madden says. “We’re trying our best to get to where we need to be, and for me to be a part of that, it makes me feel good about being part of the community, not just sitting around watching it happen. I can get in there and get involved.”
Even months later, Madden says there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight for the help flood survivors are going to need to rebuild parts of their lives and get to a new sense of normal. And to see the need for the services they’re providing firsthand has also provided him with a sense of perspective on how widespread the damage really was.
“There’s a big need for this,” he adds. “It’s a lot worse than I initially figured it was going to be.”
Despite the devastation, Madden says through his work with Cajun Navy he has also been able to see the sense of community as the recovery work began. Neighbors are helping neighbors and coming together for the greater good, he adds, and he’s glad to be a part of the overall effort to help Eastern Kentucky recover.
“It’s a really come-together type situation,” he says. “We see that everyone needs the help and it’s not like a selfish thing. I mean, we’re out here helping neighbors, and it’s pretty cool, honestly, to be able to see this.”
In the meantime, Madden says there remains a lot of work to do, and says his experience with the EKY FLOOD program is one he would recommend anyone looking for work or to lend a helping hand in the recovery effort.
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 with 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 jobseekers and employers all under one roof. Learn more at http://www.ekcep.org, http://www.jobsight.org and http://www.facebook.com/ekcep.
