YERKES – Less than four months have passed since 84-year-old Jesse Young drowned in the Kentucky River at Yerkes after his truck dropped off the narrow roadway and plunged into the cold, murky waters.

Young’s body was retrieved the following day, and life for everyone else moved on. But local residents still travel along Ky. 451 every day, along the same dangerously narrow passage where Jesse Young left the roadway, and ultimately this earth.

Several of these residents are pushing forward with plans to advocate for safety improvements to that stretch of state maintained roadway, which sits between a railroad on one side and a steep drop into the river on the other. There are no guardrails dividing the motorists and the river, and that should be changed, they say.

“I’m afraid somebody else will get drowned,” said Barbara Ambrose, whose three children travel via school bus along Ky. 451 nearly every day.

Ambrose noted that according to other local residents two other people drowned near the spot where Jesse Young’s pickup plunged into the river, but that was many years ago. But the potential for more fatalities at that same spot is high, she added.

“We need to get something else done down there before somebody else dies,” she said. “My children travel that road and they’re not the only ones.”

And to complicate things, Ambrose said this month’s rainfall, while not as excessive as other parts of the state, did raise the river and degraded the ground underneath the pavement.

With the help of her fellow community members, Ambrose has circulated a petition to present to officials about the road and the need for safety improvements, but at least one petition left at a local gas station has since disappeared. She noted that he has also appealed to state officials, such as Rep. Fitz Steele.

During a telephone conversation last week, Rep. Steele noted that he has been vigorously working on this issue and has been in contact with officials in the state Transportation Cabinet.

“I have called and written the Transportation Cabinet, and I’m waiting on a response from them,” Steele said, adding that he wants improvements made to that stretch of roadway before another accident happens. “There’s lives in danger.”

Rep. Steele’s requests for improvements to Ky. 451 have been received, noted H.B. Elkins, information officer for the Transportation Cabinet’s District 10 office in Jackson, but currently the main deterrent in moving forward with a project at that particular site remains funding, or more specifically the lack of it.

Elkins said installing a guardrail, even at that small stretch, would involve an increased scope of work in comparison with a normal guardrail installation, as the site in question currently doesn’t have adequate shoulder areas.

“It’s a special situation up there because of the way the highway is configured,” Elkins said. “There really is no shoulder there to install guardrails, and we would have to go in and drill steel and backfill and put in guardrails.”

And that’s where the cost of the project increases. For a project like that, Elkins said, there isn’t enough funding allocated for guardrail installation in the entire district.

“It’s estimated that installation would eat up [the funds] we have for the whole 10-county district,” he said.

Elkins also noted the amount of traffic on that road and the fatality record of that area doesn’t place it as high on the priority list as other areas in the district. According to research, officials could not find a recorded fatality at that site other than Jesse Young’s.

“The crash history there is such that districtwide, any guardrail request has to compete with the other nine counties,” Elkins explained. “The amount of traffic in that area doesn’t rank as high as a lot of other requests.”

But cost and records are of little concern to residents whose children must travel that road to attend school.

“I have three daughters that go to Willard (Elementary),” explained Ambrose. “They have to use that road every day.”

But according to Elkins there may be a way to obtain enough funding to improve the road. Following an evaluation of the site, officials have determined that it meets the criteria for guardrail installation, and the district has requested that acting Transportation Secretary Mike Hancock authorize the use of discretionary funds for the project. While Elkins said the request has been made, he doesn’t know how long it will take before an answer is given.

A request for information about those funds made to the Transportation Cabinet’s Public Affairs office on Tuesday was not addressed before press time.

In the meantime, parents like Barbara Ambrose must send their children to school, and knowing that one person lost his life in this area means it could happen again. And why there hasn’t been movement to make safety improvements, four months after the fact, she is unsure.

“It’s such a small place,” she said. “I don’t understand why they won’t fix it.”