A federal and state partnership is working to help businesses recover from damages caused by severe flooding in eastern Kentucky.
The partnership is called Fueling Innovation, Revitalization, and Entrepreneurship or FIRE and serves Floyd, Johnson, Martin, Magoffin, and Pike Counties.
Blake Moss is the Public Administration Specialist with the Big Sandy Area Development District. He said eastern Kentucky has a 4.4% small business to population ratio.
“So for every 100 people in our region, about 4 of them are business owners, compared to a national average of 10. So that told my boss, Joe Jacobs and I that something really had to be done, so we took action, found some different databases and software we thought could help us inform decisions, we wrote this grant to the Appalachian Regional Commission and got it.”
He said they use technology to gather data to help business owners find customers.
“We can even draw a more specific area, we can figure out the type of people that frequent that area, the foot traffic, the vehicle traffic, things like that. We can help new business owners find their first storefront, current businesses expand, and we can help current businesses figure out what their user preferences are in their area.”
This program was in place before the recent flooding, but now Moss said they are shifting gears to help these businesses recover from the floods.
He said this program also helps business owners deal with federal groups like FEMA to get assistance.
Hear more with Blake Moss with the Big Sandy Area Development District later this week on Eastern Standard on WEKU.
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