With the emergency flood relief grant funding received from Americans Helping Americans®, dozens of small businesses in downtown Beattyville, Kentucky which have been shuttered due to a once-in-a-lifetime flood earlier this month, they are now seeing a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

According to Teresa Mays of the Downtown Beattyville Alliance, which received the grant funding to disburse the funds equitably among the businesses to assist the owners in the cleanup and rebuilding of their businesses, the assessment and application process has begun.

Based on categories ranging from one to five, with five being the highest damage, business owners will be able to receive up to $4,000 in assistance to be able to reopen as soon as possible and restore the downtown community.

Teresa explained that eligible businesses will receive half of the emergency relief funding they qualify for upfront, and the other half after they reopen.

Of the 50 businesses in downtown Beattyville, 45 of them were forced to close — the family-owned department store, the small town’s only sit-down restaurant, the locally owned pharmacy, the used car dealer who has been in business there for some 50 years among them — and we are pleased to learn that only one of those 45, a hairdressers shop, is the only one which has indicating it would not be reopening.