Patsy Carter

Martin County, KY

    Her name was Dorlis, but everyone called her D. J. It’s been 5 years 11 months and 8 days, today. It’s hard. The first year, basically I didn’t know anything, nothing. And then I got up one day and I looked out and saw the coal trucks going by and you kept hearing about young people getting killed and more people getting killed. I just decided this is not right, it’s all wrong.  I was living in west Virginia at the time,  I got up one day and just went to the capitol and didn’t really get anywhere that day. Kept going back and kept going back. Legislators would tell me,  "You know better than that. The trucks are not illegal."  So then me and my sister, Judy Maynard, and my husband, Troy, started filming and following the trucks filming. Watching the trucks running stop signs and just tipping over and spilling coal all over the road and houses- dangerous. We got a lot of video coverage, numerous news crews and magazines and anything that we could get out to let people know what’s really going on in the coalfields. And it is dangerous on our road.

    Well, we had a major battle. Coal trucks over in West Virginia, the drivers didn’t like what was going on. They protested and we protested. The United Mine Workers helped me a lot and Coal River Mountain Watch, another group. They brought in caravans of coal trucks and circled the capitol in WV blowing their horns and screaming. It was really bad. We stood our ground. You know, we had a few words and battled it out. And then when I came into Kentucky, it seemed like what drivers I spoke to over here  they are a lot nicer. They talk to you in a nice way. But over there it was like we were trying to take their job. I was raised on coal. That’s one thing, my daddy worked 40 years in the mines, and hard work.

    I’d like to see it slow down a little bit. I mean, I know they got to work, but it needs to go by the legal weight limits. You know this is all our earth, it’s not just mine. I watch the trains go by on the West Virginia side out my back door and then out the front door I watch the trucks, and it’s a lot of coal. That’s our mountains. That’s our heritage. And it’s leaving us fast.

    Our road, it was destroyed by these trucks. Literally you could see 75 feet to  the river and guardrails dangling. You know our road was caved in. it was gone. And the state came in and fixed it and now it’s been about 2 years since it’s been fixed and now it’s starting to deteriorate again, over the trucks.

        You look at it as, "How sad," you know.  And then other people can get up and go on with their lives and forget about it and put in behind them. But it’s still with us. And these other people that I see that are killed with these trucks, I know that it’s somebody's mother, somebody's sister, somebody's daughter, or brother, or son. Until it really hits, for somebody to really straighten this situation out, it’s going to keep going until we get some law enforcement.

    I love my mountains. I’d like to see this slowed down. Like I said, we all live here. Our heritage is going fast, our water, our water wells. Not too many people have wells anymore and we’re so dependent on city water. The springs in the mountains, I’ve drank water out of the springs. And it’s being destroyed. And the littering and stuff, people now-a-days just don’t care it seems like. Just destroy the earth with the litter and the garbage and the coal and the dust and the traffic. It’s just out of hand and going to fast.

    It’s something that you can’t jump and do on your own. You’ve got to have help. Groups protest and try and speak to get the word out about what is going on. KFTC has been great.