Kentucky’s Response to Weather Disasters
February 12, 2025 @ 1:00 pm - 1:55 pm EST
Location: Kojo Kamau C – 4th Floor
Speaker: James Ballinger, P.E., PLS – KYTC
Presentation Description:
An Associated Press news article from July 25th,2024 states:
“When it comes to extreme weather and other so-called natural disasters, people generally look to the hurricane or earthquake-prone coasts and say that’s where the danger is. But that’s not where the highest concentration of federally declared disasters are, according to an atlas of 713 FEMA declared disasters created by Rebuild by Design and New York University. While most people in disasters think about federal government direct financial help to individual victims to pay for lost housing and businesses, the atlas focuses on the $60 billion pot of FEMA aid to governments.”
“Eight of the nine counties with the most federal declared disasters since 2011 — more than a dozen each — are in Kentucky, with the one in Vermont. These counties have four to five times the number of disaster as the national average of three in the past 13 years.”
Eastern Kentucky’s mountainous topography, which includes narrow valleys where most of the citizens live, contributes to extremely flooding and personal damage during intense rainfall events.
Kentucky has recently faced an unprecedented amount of weather disasters. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has been at the front leading the way during the response and recovery phase for these events. This presentation will feature how and why this response was successful. Transportation infrastructure resiliency is also critical to the long-term health and safety of communities and we will learn how this made a difference during the response.
Speaker Bio:
James Ballinger graduated from the University of KY in 1987 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering. He was a KY Transportation Cabinet Scholarship student and immediately started working on the Cabinet’s training program at the District 7 Office in Lexington. During his career he served in various roles including, Construction Resident Engineer, Branch Manager for Construction, and Branch Manager for Pre-Construction. He retired in December 2014 as the Chief District Engineer from Highway District 7.
After a short break, James began working at the KY Transportation Center at UK, serving as a Research and Training Engineer. In September 2015, he started working for Vaughn & Melton Consulting Engineers and served as the Lexington, KY Office Leader. He re-joined the KY Transportation Cabinet in August 2020 when he was appointed as the State Highway Engineer. James lives on his family farm in Rockcastle County with his wife Carrie, where they enjoy raising Hereford Beef Cattle.
