Areas of Carter County damaged by heavy rainfall, flooding
Published 4:55 pm Friday, August 20, 2021
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BY NIC MILLER
STAR STAFF
nic.miller@elizabethton.com
With heavy rainfall hitting Northeast Tennessee over the past few days due to tropical Storm Fred making landfall earlier this week, parts of Carter County have been ravaged by high waters and flooding.
With yards flooded and roadways covered with water and debris, enough damage was done to shut down Carter County Schools on Friday due to the dangerous conditions.
Local work crews such as the Carter County Highway Department and the Carter County Emergency Management Agency were hard at work from the early parts of Friday all the way into the evening.
Roger Colbaugh of the Carter County Highway Department spoke on just how severe the flooding and water damage was throughout the county, saying, “The areas that were hit the hardest were from Dry Hollow Road to Grindstaff Road in Stoney Creek, which includes Peters Hollow and Liberty Hollow.”
“This morning, there was water on every one of those roads, but since we have begun working on the roadways water only remains on Grindstaff Road and Liberty Hollow.”
However, the damage is much more significant than high water levels, as Colbaugh explained the underlying issues with the roads affected.
“On every one of the roads that were affected there is pipe damage, and the culverts that go under the roads in some spaces have either been filled with rock or have collapsed. Along with that, we have places on every single one of these roads where the shoulders have washed away and many of the creeks are filled with debris. It’s going to be a pretty extensive amount of work that will need to be done.”
Calls about the damaged and flooded roadways were coming in all day on Friday, and Colbaugh stated that the first crew to begin work was out before the sun.
“At 5 o’clock we had a few men out on the roads, and at 6 we sent out some more. Eventually, around 8 or 9 o’clock we had full crews out there attempting to clear water off the roadways and repair them.
Colbaugh says that crews from the Highway Department will be working on these damaged areas over the next few weeks.
