Who We Are

by Jane Marie Wix

First, we should go to the roots of where this initiative began…eastern Kentucky and the heart of Appalachia. The words “vulnerable” and “underserved populations” resound loudly in eastern Kentucky and Appalachia. Much of the area that the NWS Jackson KY office serves could be classified as “vulnerable” in some way. Whether it be our mountainous terrain, that most of our population lives in a floodplain, that we are rural and remote, we have pockets of extreme poverty and poor infrastructure, spotty cell phone reception, lack of high-speed internet, the list goes on… In some ways, as the NWS becomes more technologically advanced, we are leaving some of our rural and most vulnerable and underserved populations behind, especially if they do not have access to our information.

In April of 2020, an Amish mother was driving a buggy leaving her home in Bath County, KY, and came to a low-water bridge that had water flowing over it. Her 5 children were inside the buggy, and she was also pregnant at the time. There had been a Turn Around Don’t Drown sign in place at this bridge, but a local neighbor had removed it because they didn’t want people turning around in their driveway. Thinking that the water wasn’t high enough to cause any issues, she proceeded to cross the bridge. The buggy lost traction and flipped into the swollen creek. The mother and unborn baby survived, but after an extensive search-and-rescue, the effort turned to that of recovery. All 5 children perished in the flood waters. At an after-action meeting, the general consensus among county officials and rescue workers was that nothing else could have been done to prevent the situation. Jason York, the emergency manager for Bath County, spoke up and said, “You are wrong. We could be doing more. These communities did not have any warning or education. We need to figure out a way to get that information to them.” He then began doing research on finding information to better serve the Amish communities, including weather safety handouts from the NWS - but found no resources. 

I talked with Jason about the subject for the first time in March of the following year, as I was stepping into the role of acting Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the Jackson KY NWS. I was trying to find ways to start addressing the underserved communities and vulnerabilities in eastern Kentucky, and after some first-hand experience, he was looking to do the same. We decided to put together a task-force to address these many vulnerabilities across our home, with a goal of creating a tool kit that can be shared with the rest of the NWS and EM communities. 

When creating the task force, we decided the best method would be to keep it small, to make sure we kept everyone on the same page and try to avoid too many irons in the fire. We also knew that as we got the ball rolling, we would be enlisting the help of others for specific needs, expertise, and tasks. The task force consists of 4 people, 2 WCM’s (myself and Tony Edwards from the Charleston, WV office), and 2 Emergency Management personnel (Joe Sullivan - retired WCM from Louisville, now working with the Kentucky Emergency Management at the state level, and Jason York, the EM in Bath County). 

We then named our task force W.A.R.N. - Weather Awareness for a Rural Nation. Our goal was to do just that…bring weather awareness and weather resiliency to an otherwise overlooked and underserved population. Once we formed, we hit the ground running. Given the large, if not massive, scope of the project, it helped to break it down into specific goals. And that first goal was to work with the Amish community.

As of 2021, there are estimated to be 350,000 Amish citizens in this country, living among 33 states. Kentucky currently has the 8th largest Amish Population in the country, and this population is rapidly growing given the availability of relatively cheap farmland. The Amish lifestyle purposely has removed themselves from normal society, but as a result they have become more susceptible to weather impacts, with lack of weather safety education and the inability to receive weather warnings and forecasts. In the time since the accident, Jason has had a chance to get to know the members of the Amish Community pretty well in Bath County, and they were eager to get involved in this project. In a time when travel was not allowed for the NWS due to Covid, Jason was able to pass along insights about how the Amish community worked, what changes they would be open to, and what they would not. 

With that in mind, one of the first partnerships we developed for this project was with the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension. Each county in the state has a dedicated cooperative extension office and extension agent. We found that these offices are heavily utilized by the Amish community, especially given their focus on agriculture and homemaking. These local extension offices and agents have a better beat on how many Amish are in their community, where they are located throughout the county, and in many cases have already built relationships with them. 

After meeting with the eastern KY regional director for UK Extension, he was eager to jump on board with this project. By partnering with them, they offered to pay for the printing of educational materials for the Amish community - which will be available for pickup at each extension office, or distributed directly to the community members. The WARN task force also realized that since many of the Amish communities can be scattered across a county, and they do not have electricity, this may make it difficult for us to go to their communities and conduct weather-safety and training presentations. Luckily, each extension office has a meeting room, which would provide a centralized space for the NWS to give presentations and have the Amish community come to us instead. This will also help to reach more people at once. We encourage other NWS offices to develop similar partnerships with your extension offices - not only is this a great way to build a Weather Ready Nation, but they can prove to be a huge asset on many levels, including with the Amish Community.
 

In summary, this is an evolving and large-scale effort.  But any goal of this magnitude is accomplished in the same way…one step at a time. While we have met many milestones in the short 10 months that we have been together as a task force, we still have so much work ahead of us. We look forward to the information we gather and are able to share, the many partnerships we make along the way, and the impacts that we can make within the communities. I also want to reiterate that this current effort to reach out and better serve the Amish communities is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to dealing with underserved populations across our area. I am thankful to my other task force members and our vision to continue pushing forward, to be an advocate of change, hope, and most importantly…resiliency across eastern Kentucky, Appalachia, as well as across the country.