States of Emergency and other fun stuff :D

[hazelrunmama]

Sorry I haven't been posting much this week.  I've been checking in but not signing in.  We had 5 inches of rain in 6 hours last Sunday night and two of the four routes into our town were washed out.  The bridge that connects the north side to the south side sustained some damage and part of the decking collapsed, so we had to close it.  Now, granted, we're a hole-in-the-wall with not a whole lot of traffic, but it's inconvenient having to go 50 miles out of the way to get to the bank.  LOL  Plus, it being the Labor Day weekend, the county campground down the road was chock full...and most of those people wanted to leave town over the bridge...whoopsie! 

Anyway, we declared our first (in our 5 terms on the Town Board) State of Emergency and we're in the process of fixing all the roads.  In a way, the timing was good because a construction crew was slated to start some work on the Tuesday after Labor Day on our one paved route.  All their big equipment was here and we managed to hire on a guy with an excavator before another township snapped him up, so our repair work should probably be done by tomorrow!  Yay!  It's been an experience, though.

Here's a picture of what the water over the dam looks like on a normal day:
Attachment Deleted

And here's what it looked like on the 7th:

Water over the dam 9-7-15

I hope that link works--it's a link to a video I posted on my FB page--only 9 seconds long.

[luv2bird]

Sept 10, 2015 17:28:39 GMT -5 hazelrunmama said:

Sorry I haven't been posting much this week.  I've been checking in but not signing in.  We had 5 inches of rain in 6 hours last Sunday night and two of the four routes into our town were washed out.  The bridge that connects the north side to the south side sustained some damage and part of the decking collapsed, so we had to close it.  Now, granted, we're a hole-in-the-wall with not a whole lot of traffic, but it's inconvenient having to go 50 miles out of the way to get to the bank.  LOL  Plus, it being the Labor Day weekend, the county campground down the road was chock full...and most of those people wanted to leave town over the bridge...whoopsie! 

Anyway, we declared our first (in our 5 terms on the Town Board) State of Emergency and we're in the process of fixing all the roads.  In a way, the timing was good because a construction crew was slated to start some work on the Tuesday after Labor Day on our one paved route.  All their big equipment was here and we managed to hire on a guy with an excavator before another township snapped him up, so our repair work should probably be done by tomorrow!  Yay!  It's been an experience, though.

Here's a picture of what the water over the dam looks like on a normal day:


And here's what it looked like on the 7th:

Water over the dam 9-7-15

I hope that link works--it's a link to a video I posted on my FB page--only 9 seconds long.

Zowie WOW!!!  Be careful, Hazel, that looks dangerous.

[hazelrunmama]

Not so dangerous as long as we're careful on the roads. That big culvert on Hwy M that blew out and killed 3 people back in 2012 was out again, but no one got hurt this time. Our roads and the bridge are almost totally repaired already, so that's good! I was amazed at how flood-resistant our community was--very little property damage beyond the roads.

[downylover]

OMG, that looks very scary. I'm glad they're getting everything repaired so quickly.

[hazelrunmama]

Looks like we might be able to get some money back from the state's emergency road repair fund, so that would be good. Working on the petition for DOT aids now...not the most scintillating task I've ever undertaken, but not the most boring, either.  I had the task of documenting the damage before it was repaired so I could put the camera to good use.  This was our most impressive washout--we had culverts out in three other places that washed out all the way across the road, but this one, that only washed out one lane, took by far the most gravel to repair:

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[luv2bird]

Sept 16, 2015 0:01:53 GMT -5 hazelrunmama said:

Looks like we might be able to get some money back from the state's emergency road repair fund, so that would be good. Working on the petition for DOT aids now...not the most scintillating task I've ever undertaken, but not the most boring, either.  I had the task of documenting the damage before it was repaired so I could put the camera to good use.  This was our most impressive washout--we had culverts out in three other places that washed out all the way across the road, but this one, that only washed out one lane, took by far the most gravel to repair:

Wow! that is some hole in the road there.

[hazelrunmama]

Ya, it was impressive but since it only washed out the one lane, it was also our least problematic area.

[BarbK]

Hazel, just saw these posts. Hope everything is back to normal.

[Calamity Creek Gal]

Well, I missed all of the excitement! Looks like Mother Nature had a real good time in your area. Glad there were no people injuries. That lane washout is impressive.

[hazelrunmama]

We're still technically under a state of emergency, but we're just waiting for our next meeting to lift it. All the repairs are about done and I have the application for road aid almost finished for submission. So things are pretty much back to normal and Ma Nature is behaving more kindly of late.

Lue, you should see the washout on CTH M about a mile or so from here. It's where the road blew out 3 years ago and it's just as big and gnarly this time as last--all the way across the road and about 50 ft across! The County hasn't even attempted to fix it, yet--they've been consulting with engineers to see what they can do to prevent it happening again. Up until the last washout there, there had been absolutely no issues with the culverts. They replaced them with bigger ones and thought that fixed the vulnerability, but this year they blew out again. Sort of scary since we do travel that road pretty frequently (though not during rain storms any more... O.O )