Repair costs may exceed January’s clean-up bill
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“It’s worse than it was before,” said Highway Superintendent Harold Glenn. “It came so hard and so fast that it just tore out big chunks of roads. There wasn’t hardly a direction you could go without hitting a road underwater.”
McMinnville Water Plant records show 5.14 inches of precipitation fell between Friday evening and early Monday. However, most of the damage came Saturday evening and Sunday morning when 2.64 inches fell. On the bright side, the predicted rain did not continue Monday. However, the forecast is not friendly as more heavy rain is expected this morning extending into this afternoon.
Prior to the weekend downpour, the county highway department had just finished cleaning up and fixing damage done by a flood in January which saw over 7 inches of rain fall in two days. County roads alone suffered $150,000 worth of damage – and the area was denied federal disaster relief assistance to help offset the clean-up bill.
“The cost is going to be as bad or worse than the one this January,” Glenn said. “We’re probably looking at $100,000 to $150,000, if not more. There’s hardly a road around that wasn’t damaged.”
Tuesday, as the possibility of more significant rains loomed, county crews were fixing a large washout at Deerfield subdivision in which they were having to pour 60 yards of concrete. Glenn said the rain also lifted the pavement from Pleasant Hill Road and did significant damage to Todd Lane.
“We had to close several roads because water was up over them,” Glenn said. “After the water went back a little, we found all sorts of damage. Many of these places were where we haven’t had problems in the past. The rain was so hard that some gravel roads were just swept clean and some paved roads just had the pavement lifted off them.”
While denied federal assistance last time, Glenn said he intends to keep careful records in hopes of getting assistance from the latest flood. The damage from the two downpours, which combined could cost over a quarter-million dollars, has blown a hole in the county’s road budget.
“We just got through fixing the problems from the last flood, now we have this,” Glenn said. “It’s certainly hurt our budget, but if we can’t get more then we’ll just have to make due with what we have somehow.”
While roads again took a hit, Glenn said he is glad to know no one was seriously injured in the latest flood. Statewide, seven people were killed in flood-related accidents. Among them was a teen-ager in nearby Marshall County who was swept away by flood waters while he was helping friends push a car from a flooded section of road.