County regroups after flooding

Heavy rains over the holidays mean more work for the county engineering department. County engineer David Palmer said roads across the county were impacted by flooding, some of which have been closed because of the damage – such as Military Bridge Road. “The water got up completely over the road,” “The creek got so high it just backed up over the road … The erosion was on the main creek side. It just washed everything away right there. It’s a 300-foot section that’s pretty much gone.”

Other roads with damage include:

– County Road 8 near Dismals – “One of the abutment corners was washed out pretty bad. It’s going to be a fairly significant job to put that back.”

– A portion of College Road, between Pike Avenue and Highway 237 – “There’s a pipe that goes across the road there, and it got flooded and caused some pretty major erosion.”

– Lovett Lane in Hodges

– Gravel Hill Road – “We lost some of the sections of cross-drain pipe.”

“Right now we’re waiting on the representatives from the state to come in and look at it,” Palmer said, adding that they were expected to be in town Wednesday.

Every road should be open within a month. Palmer encouraged the communities to be patient while road repairs are made. “It’s a bunch of them; we can’t do them all in a week,” Palmer said. “We have numerous gravel roads that really took a beating. It’s just going to take some time.”

But Palmer said all in all, the county didn’t have that many problems.

“We didn’t have any major failures where something absolutely blew out,” he said.