Some heavy rains caused chaos on local roadways on Saturday, September 3, sending the DeKalb County Road Department scrambling. The intense precipitation caused driveways to wash into the roads, water to cover roads, and in some cases the pavement to be buckled.
DeKalb Road Supervisor Danny Hale told the Smithville Review that the damage actually occurred from two different rain cells. “We had some damage down under the hill, near the Alexandria area, on Saturday [September 3]. I was leaving Tramel Branch Road at 3:00 p.m. and had to drive through a foot of water in our driveway just to get out.”
“Dispatch let us know that we had Old Highway 53 shut down between Alexandria and Liberty because it was a mess,” Hale continued. “I came in from the Highway 96 side and there were driveways that had washed out into the road, and the pavement had buckled up on down. We put a backhoe in to help clean that up, but we had to shut part of the road down because we were going to have to replace some tiles.”
“About 10:30 that same night, dispatch contacted me again saying that Bright Hill Road was flooded up in Smithville. We had calls from there, then Evins Mill Road, then another from Seven Springs Road. Meridian Drive was cut off, off of Seven Springs,” Hale explained. “I got home about 2:30 Sunday morning. We got it to where everyone could get out, but we had some work to do. It really tore the roads up.”
According to some reports, the Alexandria/Liberty area received as much as seven inches of rain in an hour and a half, while six inches of rain fell in the Smithville area later that evening.
“It messed up Old Highway 53,” Hale said. “It washed part of Wilson Hollow away, and some residents couldn’t get out of their driveway on Upper Helton Road, and we took care of that. It washed the Narrow Way out and we got that fixed.”
Hale said his crews worked throughout last week repairing some of the damage, and attempting to make some areas drain better. “We had to dig up the old tiles on Old Highway 53, and replace them with some bigger tiles. We repositioned them also, to help it drain better.”
Hale said crews are working hard to patch many of the areas, with more permanent fixes coming soon.
