Kentucky Storm Resilience – Documentaries and Discussion, took place on Friday July 18th at the Worsham Cinema on the University of Kentucky’s campus. It brought together non-profits, industries, businesses, and government agencies across Kentucky to watch documentaries with the primary goal of collaboration and connection for the good of storm resilience across the Commonwealth.
The event kicked off with Kevin Puckett, Senior Communication Strategist for KY NSF EPSCoR, welcoming the group and introducing the emcee, Shane Holinde. Holinde Shane Holinde serves as the Outreach Manager for Kentucky Mesonet and Kentucky Climate Center at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. He joined Kentucky Mesonet just over two years ago after working more than 22 years as a TV meteorologist at WBKO in Bowling Green, where he covered everything from floods to droughts, ice storms to tornadoes.
Holinde described his harrowing work covering the 2021 Tornadoes in Western Kentucky, and quoted his colleague Chris Fisher, who was working for the national weather service in Jackson, Kentucky during the horrendous Eastern Kentucky in 2022. Says Fisher, “There is barely a day that goes by that I don’t think about the flooding in some way and the great people of eastern Kentucky. I’ve been back to visit several times over the past year because these mountains will always have a place in my heart.”
The first documentary was All is Not Lost, by Appalshop. It chronicles the catastrophic flooding in Eastern Kentucky on July 28, 2022. By Madison Buchannan, Nik Lee, and Oakley Fugate of Appalshop, The documentary captures the severe weather, heavy rains, and subsequent floods that devastated the region, but it also emphasizes the community’s resilience and strong sense of support. You can watch that film below:
The second film, CLIMBS – The Documentary gave an in-depth look at Kentucky NSF EPSCoR’s Track-1 Research Project, CLIMBS, as 8 institutions, dozens of faculty, and hundreds of students come together across the commonwealth to build climate resilience through better data, better prediction models, better response systems, and community outreach. Created by Kevin Puckett with the help of 20 researcher interviewees, UK Research Communications, and WKU Public Relations.
Each film was bookended by networking sessions which were prompted by the questions related to each film. Question 1: “How have severe storms in Kentucky affected you personally and/or professionally?” Question 2: “What have you as an organization, company, or individual, done or seen that might help build Kentucky Storm Resilience?”
Following the films, an interdisciplinary panel took the stage and took prepared questions from Holinde, including:
- Rebekah Radtke – Rebekah Radtke is an Associate Professor of Interiors at the University of Kentucky, where she directs the Sustainable Futures Design Lab and collaboratively leads Studio Appalachia. She brings design education into direct dialogue with disaster-affected communities in Eastern Kentucky, using interiority as a lens to explore resilience, cultural identity, and regional knowledge. Her research bridges global and Appalachian communities through participatory design, resulting in the co-creation of resilient, place-based solutions to environmental disruption.
- Trinity Adams – Trinity Adams is an Ed.S student in the school psychology program, originally from Letcher County, KY. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Kentucky with a B.A. in Psychology, as well as minors in Appalachian Studies and Art Studio. Trinity has participated in a range of internships throughout her undergraduate career, including being a camp instructor at Cowan Kids on the Creek, working with domestic abuse shelters in Hazard and Lexington, and aiding local flood relief efforts through the AppalachiaCorps program at UK. Currently, she is a student worker at the Appalachian Center on campus.
- Aaron Asbury – Aaron Asbury is a filmmaker, media educator, and regional advocate with over a decade of experience in film and television production. A 2018 graduate of the University of Pikeville with degrees in Film & Media Arts and Communication, he served as channel manager for Pike TV and mentored students and interns in both official and informal teaching roles. At Appalshop, he has taught for several years in the Appalachian Media Institute’s Summer Documentary Institute, with many of his former interns now award-winning filmmakers. A survivor himself of the 2022 flooding in Letcher county, he is dedicated to raising awareness to our ever present risk of climate disasters, particularly in Appalachia.
- Ryan Thigpen – Ryan Thigpen is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at UK’s Earth and Environmental Sciences. Most of his background is in structural geology and tectonics with an emphasis on mountain building and earthquake hazards in places like the Tetons and the Himalayas, but over the last 3-4 years much of his work has shifted to climate change hazards, specifically focused on his home mountain range of the southern Appalachians. Ryan co-leads the Paleo-Perspectives component of the CLIMBS project, which focuses on building better warning systems in rural mountain areas in the short-term. In the long-term, the project focuses on using the flood record over the last ~10,000 years to understand just how big these floods could get, with hopes of informing more resilient and sustainable design of Appalachian communities. Ryan also works with the Enviropods Program through the CLIMBS project which helps educate middle and high school students across Kentucky about earth and hazard sciences.
After the panelists presented on their work building storm resilience, they took questions from the audience and concluded the event.
On behalf of KY NSF EPSCoR and the CLIMBS project, we’d like to thank each of our attendees for coming out and supporting this event. We hope some collaborative seeds were planted and that moving forward in the CLIMBS projects, new collaborations were built across disciplines.
