President Donald Trump outlined on Thursday his long-awaited plan to address the opioid crisis as a national public health emergency. Part of that plan was based on experiences in the Ohio Valley region.
In an address at the White House Thursday both President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump mentioned efforts in the Ohio Valley region to help infants affected by the crisis.
Trump said that a hospital nursery in West Virginia treats one in every five babies for symptoms of addiction.
“Because these precious babies were exposed to opioids or other drugs in the womb,” he said.
According to data from the West Virginia Health Statistics Center, 5 percent of babies born in West Virginia last year were born drug-affected.
First Lady Melania Trump spoke about her recent visit to a Huntington, West Virginia, treatment center for infants and mothers called Lily’s Place.
“I learned that to help babies succeed we must help their parents succeed,” she said. “By placing priority on the whole family, Lily’s Place is giving infants the best opportunity.”
Lily’s Place director Rebecca Crowder was in the audience for the address.
The president’s public health emergency declaration could encourage additional resources for treatment facilities. The White House has not yet released details of the emergency plan or how the programs will be funded.
The rate of deaths from opioids in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio is more than twice the national average. On average last year, 15 people died each day in the three-state region from opioid overdoses.
On this West Virginia Morning, the poultry industry is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow faster work speeds at some facilities that slaughter and package chickens. The industry says a new inspection program allows them to process hundreds of birds per minute. But as Nicole Erwin reports, worker and food safety advocates worry about higher speed in an industry with an already spotty safety record.
Derek Akal, 22, grew up in the famed coalfields of Harlan County, Kentucky. He’s a bit over six feet tall, he’s black, and he has an athlete’s build. Neat curls of black hair rise off the top of his head, and on his chin, he keeps a closely-trimmed mustache and goatee.
I first interviewed Derek in October 2016. At that time, he said he was trying to become a Kentucky state trooper, but also making plans to move to Texas to work on an oil rig.
By November, Derek still had one plan to find work near home, and another plan to move West, but both plans had changed. Now, he was following a lead on a lineman job that would have him climbing utility poles and making plans to move to California after his birthday, in March.
Plans Through the Whole Alphabet
For Derek, changing plans is part of the plan. When I asked Derek what would be the first thing he’d want people to hear from him in this story, this is what he told me:
“It’s okay if you want to stay. It’s also okay if you want to leave. But if you’re going to leave, then make sure you always have more than three plans. Plan A, plan B, plan C— you’ve got to have through the whole alphabet!”
Derek has had a lots of ideas about what he could do at home, and he’s told me he would stay home if his mom or grandma asked him to, but the plans Derek has gotten most excited about all involve him moving somewhere far away.
“That’s where I might have a future. I know I’m young, but I’m ready to get out there and do a lot.”
Plan A: Football Dreams
Derek was raised primarily by his granddad, his grandma and his mom.
“Because his father wasn’t around. His grandfather was his father,” said his mother, Katina Akal.
When Derek was a junior in high school, his granddad passed away.
Credit courtesy Derek Akal
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Derek Akal with his grandmother and mom
His grandma and his mom said they noticed that Derek became more withdrawn. He started to focus more intensely on a goal his granddad had pushed him toward— excelling at sports to hopefully earn a college scholarship.
You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive
His senior year, after a summer dedicated to working out, Derek became a football star. “I got defensive player of the year. I got four district championships, and I got three regional championships. You know, I dedicated all that [to] my granddad.”
Harlan County High School’s football field is called Coal Miner’s Memorial Stadium. It has huge metal bleachers on two sides, and a giant modern scoreboard behind the end zone. It’s in a beautiful spot, a patch of flat land that was blasted out of the wooded hillsides that surround it.
When Derek and I visited in November, the leaves were at their most colorful. A gym class was playing flag football, and the sound of gunshots told us someone was out hunting nearby.
Derek started to get nostalgic, remembering how he used to feel back when he played here as a Harlan County Black Bear. He told me about times his blood and tears fell onto the turf. He told me about walking onto the field before games, in front of a roaring crowd that would sing along to the country hit “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.”
Credit Benny Becker/ WMMT
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Derek Akal
In the deep dark hills of Eastern Kentucky
That’s the place where I trace my bloodline
And it’s there I read on a hillside gravestone
You’ll never leave Harlan alive
“I’m not a big fan of country music,”Derek said, “but you know it got me pumped up like crazy. I love it.”
The last game of the season, Derek got hurt. Some of his teammates had the opponent’s running back held up, so Derek charged in to help make the tackle.
“As soon as I hit him, my head cocked all the way back, and I felt the back of my head touch my back. I broke my neck— I broke my C1 and my C2… If I hadn’t gotten hurt I’d be playing for a bowl game right now with a D1 college.”
Going Away to College
Derek was in a neck brace for four months, but he was still getting college scholarships to play more football. He accepted a scholarship to attend the University of the Cumberlands, in Williamsburg Kentucky. It’s only two hours from Derek’s home in Harlan County, but the college draws students from all across the country.
There, Derek sometimes felt like an outsider. In Williamsburg, he stood out for the way he talked— for his Harlan county accent.
Many of his classmates were surprised that someone who looks like him, a clean-cut and fashionably dressed black man, could be from rural Kentucky.
“They’d be like, ‘oh where [are] you from?
And I’d say, ‘Two hours away in the mountains.’
And first thing, they be like, ‘You serious? You don’t even look like you’re from Kentucky! You look like you’re from Georgia or Florida or New York City, city places like that.’
I’m sitting here like, ‘No man, I’m from Harlan County Kentucky!’”
That wasn’t the only discomfort Derek felt with being a young black man in Williamsburg. Derek said his feelings about the town soured after he and a friend had their car searched by police twice in one week.
“We gave [the police] the license and everything, and he was like, ‘oh, I thought you guys had stuff on y’all.’ I can’t read minds, but seeing a couple of black guys together, I feel like we got profiled right there.”
Things on the football field weren’t going great either. Two games into the season, Derek’s neck started bother him again. He became afraid that playing more football could make his spinal injury become more severe. “I didn’t want to play no more,” Derek said, “because, you know, I want to be able to walk.”
Derek was homesick, and he didn’t want to get deeper in student debt, so he decided to drop out and move back home.
What Now?
Derek’s mom says that when he got home, he was afraid that she and his grandma would be disappointed in him, but she understood where he was coming from. ” “I said,‘look, college is not for everybody. Do what you feel like you want to do.’”
“Go do something,” his grandma urged him. She said, she worries there aren’t jobs in Lynch; she would like him to get out if it means he can find work. “Go get yourself a job. I don’t want him to stick around here, walking these streets.”
Credit Benny Becker/ WMMT
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Derek Akal
Derek’s mother agrees. “I’d rather for him to go find work and be a productive member of society. I’d rather him do that than stay here and be miserable, because I can see it already. I want him to go somewhere that he can be happy.”
Derek’s mommas, as he calls them, instilled in him a drive to get out of Appalachia and find opportunity elsewhere. “I got it in my head that I can make it out, and be something for myself, by myself.”
Derek’s not the first person in his family to have that thought. In the next chapter of Derek Akal’s Struggle to Stay, we’re going to hear more about how the hunt for better work and a better life has affected Derek’s family and community for generations.
This story was produced by WMMT in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and the Ohio Valley ReSource, which is made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Music in the audio version of this story was provided by Marisa Anderson. We’ll hear the next part of Derek Akal’s Struggle to Stay story next week, here on Inside Appalachia.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in West Virginia and Kentuckyover the weekend to see some innovative ways that schools are using new technology.
Zuckerberg has been traveling the country working on his New Year’s resolution to speak with people in every state. On Sunday, he met with educators and students from across Eastern Kentucky.
Students showed Zuckerberg a small mobile house, called a tiny home, that they built in a high school shop class. He also toured a drone assembly lab and took a moment to play a virtual reality video game with some students who designed it.
“These kids were showing me the games, robots, drones, and VR apps (!!) they were coding,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post (of course).
“Mark Zuckerberg wanted to come and just learn about what we were doing and how we were personalizing learning for kids in our area,” Paul Green said. Green leads the Appalachian Technology Initiative at the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative, which is trying to expand personalized learning.
“Personalized learning allows kids to learn at their own pace, in their own way, and it maximizes all students’ potential,” he said.
Green said that several schools he works with have started using the Summit Learning Platform, a new computer-based tool for personalized learning that Facebook engineers helped build.
Jeff Hawkins, head of the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative said he hopes that Zuckerberg’s visit will spread awareness about how new tools can help rural schools.
“We may be able to help other people in rural communities learn how, through the use of technology, personalized learning is possible,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins and Green work with schools across an area that has been hard-hit by the decline of the coal industry. They said they intend to continue expanding access to new technologies and personalized learning.
Zuckerberg’s invitation-only visit was arranged with little public notice and no media attention. The visit comes as Facebook faces scrutiny for its role in enabling the spread of fake news during the 2016 election.
Harvey. Irma. Maria. The hurricane season’s super-charged storms have highlighted the importance of disaster planning, and the aftermath offers a fresh lesson in just how long and difficult recovery can be.
Communities in the Ohio Valley, some still recovering from flash floods themselves, are looking at ways to prepare for what emergency management professionals warn is an era of more frequent extreme weather.
It’s time, experts say, to get ready for the new normal.
“Night From Hell”
In late June, 2016, rain fell hard and fast over West Virginia’s steep hills and narrow valleys, causing creeks and rivers to rise to levels scientists say are likely to occur only once every thousand years. Twenty-three people died.
“That was like the night from hell,” Susan Jack recalled.
Jack was in the process of moving away from her home town of Clendenin along the Elk River, about 20 miles northeast of Charleston. A contract job was coming to an end and she had just put her belongings into storage units. Then the storms came.
Credit courtesy of Susan Jack
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courtesy of Susan Jack
Susan Jack (R) and her aunt Lula Jack watch as a family home ruined by floodwaters is torn down. “It was a tough day,” Jack recalled. “So many childhood memories.”
“I ended up carrying my 90-year-old great aunt through floodwaters that night to get out,” she said. “It just came up so fast that you really didn’t have a whole lot of time to respond. But we got to safety and we actually spent the night in a GoMart parking lot at the top of the hill.”
Instead of moving away as planned, Jack got swept up in the current of disaster response. She’s now the executive director of the Greater Kanawha Long-Term Recovery Committee.
“It’s my job now…to make sure that people do not forget that we’re not finished here yet,” Jack said.
Clendenin is now 15 months into recovery. Disaster experts anticipate 3 to 4 more years before all needs have been met. Flash flooding is not unusual in West Virginia’s harsh terrain but the scale and frequency of flooding are becoming more intense.
“Floods are a part of life when you live on a river, but nothing like this,” Jack said. “This was just unlike anything any of us had seen.”
New Normal
Climate scientists and emergency planners say the data support what Susan Jack and others are seeing on the ground. Extreme weather events are increasing. The National Climate Assessment, a comprehensive report compiled by numerous federal agencies, shows that heavy downpours have become more common over the past several decades, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. And the report projects that frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation events will increase as the climate continues to change.
Timon McPhearson is an expert in community resilience and a professor of urban ecology at the New School in New York. He worries that federal assistance isn’t keeping pace with devastation left in the wake of increased extreme weather events occurring throughout the country.
“If we take climate change seriously and we take the science behind it seriously,” he said, “we’re going to need a much stronger and more robust FEMA with a much larger pile of cash that is able to do emergency response.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency last year gave out $42 million in West Virginia. And those figures don’t begin to match the value of lost property.
“FEMA assistance doesn’t make you whole,” Tom Hart said. He’s an emergency manager in northern West Virginia. “It’s something there to help but it doesn’t make you whole.”
Hart’s section of the state was hit again by flooding this year. His region is now shifting into long- term recovery mode after flash floods took his community by surprise twice in July.
“We have people that were flooded that were still cleaning up from that when they got hit again,” he said. That brought a disaster declaration, and more than $2 million in aid from FEMA.
Each state, county and several cities have disaster preparedness agencies tasked with planning for emergency response. Many leaders of those agencies, like Kentucky’s Director of Emergency Management, Michael Dossett, are reviewing and adapting those plans in light of higher incidences of extreme weather. Dossett said Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are just the latest examples.
“We’re into the new normal,” Dossett said.
“They’re massive systems and they loiter over specific real estate for much longer than the timeline for previous disasters. The damage is more extreme, the heartbreak for our citizens across the nation is expanded.”
Credit Kara Lofton
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White Sulphur Springs in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, after heavy rains resulted in flash flooding that killed 23 people. The Ohio Valley is one of the most flash-flood prone regions in the country.
Disaster managers like Dossett in Kentucky and Hart in West Virginia coordinate response and preparedness efforts among agencies and community partners. They conduct training and drills, study infrastructure, and systematically analyze response events after they occur.
Much of the work involves decisions about large-scale infrastructure and long-term planning. But both men also stressed the importance of individual awareness and readiness.
“You have to be you have to be a little bit more alert, you know, about your surroundings,” Hart said.
Are there debris in streams, downed trees near culverts, weakened bridges or roads nearby? Hart also encouraged people to think about the vulnerabilities of neighbors and potential industrial hazards.
Hart and other experts said they store water in their homes as well as medical supplies, generators, candles and even items like camp stoves and small propane bottles. They say it’s best to have enough on hand to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours. These experts want disaster preparedness to become a cultural norm, along the lines of smoke alarms and safety belts.
“More Valuable Than Money”
From her recovering community in Clendenin, Susan Jack wondered how many disasters it will take to change the culture throughout the Ohio Valley.
“Unless you’ve been through this, you just don’t get it. You don’t have a clue,” she said. “It’s tough to get what needs done, done. Because there’s no sense of urgency.”
The storms brought a lot of change for Jack and she said it forced her to rethink some priorities. All her belongings in a storage facility were gone.
“I lost everything.”
She found it hard to get reimbursement for items lost in storage and didn’t have time to challenge when her claim was denied.
“It changes your perspective on life so much,” she said. “I look back on it now and I’m like, ‘What in the world are you thinking to have four storage units full of stuff anyway?’”
Now, like many flood victims, she lives with a mountain of debt, broken credit, and all the pain, heartache and humiliation that go with it. But Jack said her work helping others recover has given her peace of mind.
“I sleep like a baby at night because I know that I did everything in my power to try to help my community,” she said. “And you know, sometimes I think maybe that’s more valuable than money.”
Rural towns like hers in long-term recovery still need skilled volunteers such as carpenters and contractors. But she said wherever and whenever floods hit next, she and others who experienced disasters will be ready with knowledge to share about how to pick up the broken pieces.
ReSource reporter Becca Schimmel contributed to this story.
A rash of fatal coal mining accidents in the Ohio Valley region pushed the nation’s total number of mining deaths to a level not seen since 2015, sparking concern among safety advocates.
Already this year 12 miners have died on the job in the U.S., compared to eight fatalities in all of 2016. Two miners were killed in Kentucky and six in West Virginia.
Mine safety experts say this spike in fatal accidents is troubling because it comes at a time when far fewer miners are working compared to recent years, and during a presidential administration pressing to rapidly increase coal production and roll back regulations.
Credit MSHA
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MSHA
On June 13, 2017, a 32-year-old continuous mining machine operator was fatally injured when he was pinned between the cutter head of a remote controlled continuous mining machine and the coal rib.
“I love our coal miners and they’re coming back strong,” Trump said.
Mining employment has increased slightly since Trump took office. But veteran mine safety advocate Davitt McAteer said he worries that a coal comeback brings risks for miners. McAteer led the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, during the Clinton administration, and has conducted investigations of mining disasters since then.
“You don’t want to bring them back and send miners to their deaths because you’re not paying attention to safety,” McAteer said. “I’m very much in favor of bringing the miners back. It’s a question of, are they brought back in a way that protects them?”
Last year was the safest in the country’s coal mining history, with eight fatalities. The 12 fatalities so far this year match the total from 2015, a year when there were nearly 25,000 more people employed by coal companies, according to MSHA data.
That has mine safety experts like McAteer concerned. They point to a few factors that could be contributing to a rise in mining deaths: an increase in inexperienced miners, a possible turn away from strict safety enforcement, and a leadership void in the nation’s top mine safety agency.
Safety Vacancy
McAteer noted that for the first seven months of the Trump administration there was no one in the position he once held at MSHA.
“For that position to go vacant says we’re not paying attention to this. And in fact conditions like we’re seeing in West Virginia and across the country, of increased fatalities, come about when we’re not paying attention,” McAteer said.
President Trump appointed Congressional aide and White House advisor Wayne Palmer acting secretary of MSHA on August 22, until a permanent appointment is made. The United Mine Workers of America said in a statement that Palmer has no experience in mining or health and safety.
Although the agency lacks a leader, it has announced a new approach to safety: what’s called a “compliance assistance” program. An agency data analysis showed that inexperienced miners were more likely to be injured or killed. Seven of the fatalities this year have involved miners who had one year or less experience at the mine where they died.
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On May 18, 2017, an utility miner received fatal injuries when his head hit the mine roof and/or roof support.
In response, MSHA said in June it would “encourage mine operators to participate and share information” about new miners on the job.
That raises a red flag for Kentucky lawyer and mine safety advocate Tony Oppegard.
“Every time there is this de-emphasis on enforcement and an emphasis on ‘compliance assistance’ the fatality rate always goes up,” Oppegard said.
Compliance assistance
Oppegard said the main job for MSHA and its inspectors is to enforce the laws and regulations at mines, and the majority of coal mining deaths are caused by violations of safety regulations.
Credit Courtesy Tony Oppegard
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Lexington, KY, attorney and safety advocate Tony Oppegard
“You know, it’s hard to pinpoint anytime why there are fatalities, but almost every coal mining fatality is preventable. There are very few that you can truly call a fluke,” Oppegard said.
Oppegard said compliance assistance was the approach MSHA tried during the George W. Bush administration, with mixed results. That eight-year period saw some improvements in safety. But the era was also marked by numerous mine disasters, including the Sago disaster in West Virginia and the Darby explosion in Kentucky, which together took 17 lives.
The UMWA also expressed skepticism about the assistance approach.
“The UMWA is not and never has been in favor of so-called ‘compliance assistance’ programs, and this one is no different,” UMWA President Cecil Roberts wrote. Roberts said MSHA is giving mine operators leeway to select who can participate in the program, something he warned will undermine effectiveness of safety training. And he complained that the MSHA change came without notice to the union.
“Despite our 127-year history of dealing with mine safety issues and developing solutions to those issues, MSHA failed to reach out to us at all with respect to developing this program.
An MSHA spokesperson declined an interview request for this story. There are indications that the agency is continuing with some Obama-era initiatives intended to increase enforcement and inspections.
For example, as of July, MSHA was still using a targeted enforcement program established in 2010 in the wake of the mining disaster at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. Those “impact inspections” focus on mines that merit increased agency attention and enforcement and included inspections in Kentucky and West Virginia this year.
Credit Courtesy Celeste Monforton
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Work safety researcher Celeste Monforton.
Celeste Monforton is a former MSHA official and occupational health researcher at George Washington University and Texas State University. She said the balance between strict enforcement and assistance by the agency will vary with different administrations.
“You know one administration, a Democratic administration, is interested in enforcement and wants to do enforcement. And a Republican administration wants to do compliance assistance,” she said. “But in reality my experience has been that administrations do both.”
Monforton said compliance assistance is an important part of what regulators do. However, it should not take the place of the mine inspections required by the law.
“What we want to avoid and what we need to pay attention to is if compliance assistance is supplanting enforcement,” Monforton said.
Monforton added that while any death is one too many, the longer statistical trend still shows improved safety over the years.
State Changes
McAteer said West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is uniquely positioned to help. The Governor has been involved in the coal mining industry for about 24 years.
“So he is in a specifically opportune position to be able to make that turn-around, whereas others who might not have the background don’t have that kind of industry contact and he’s in a position to make that happen,” McAtteer said.
One of the mine fatalities this year happened in a coal mine owned by Justice’s family. And MSHA has issued citations for safety violations. Justice did not respond to requests for comment.
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On February 27, 2017, a 43-year-old plant attendant was fatally injured when he fell about 19 feet onto a moving refuse belt. The victim was found in a transfer chute, approximately 55 feet down the belt from where he had fallen.
Some changes at the state level have drawn criticism from safety advocates. A new law this year disbanded a Kentucky mining board responsible for reviewing training and safety regulations for coal miners.
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet Communications Director John Mura said the mining board was abolished in order to avoid duplication of effort and to save money. He said its duties are still carried out by another body.
Legislators in Kentucky and West Virginia considered, but later turned down, bills that would have reduced the amount of state mine inspections.
Stand down for safety
McAteer said the current increase in fatalities is reason for the mining industry to stop production temporarily in order to re-evaluate safety procedures.
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On February 3, 2017, a 54-year-old truck driver sustained hip and leg fractures when he jumped from the cab of his truck as it was overturning. He died 7 days later due to complications associated with his injuries
“By having a stand down, where you for hours or for a day stopped production and you say, ‘Let’s take a look at this, because we don’t want to lose any more miners,’ ” McAteer said. “We know how to mine safely and we need to be addressing if there are problems that crop up.”
McAteer said a renewed focus on safety is especially important if the Trump administration aims to fulfill its pledge to ramp up coal production.
