Parts of Wiregrass under water

This three-hour tour was anything but pleasurable for Houston County officials.

Houston County Commission Chairman Mark Culver and County Engineer Mark Pool toured road damage Saturday evening with local media and said the full extent of the damage may not be known for weeks.

By dark, Culver said county road crews had assessed about 30 percent of the county’s roads. Nine were said to have significant damage, and Culver said crews would begin assessing roads again this morning.

“We want to stress that all county roads remain closed,” Culver said. “We’ve seen a lot of water along the roadways, and we still need to do a lot more evaluating before we know exactly what we have.” 

Ken Gould, a senior forecaster for the National Weather Service out of Tallahassee, Fla., said the amount of rainfall dropped in the Dothan area was more common with a tropical storm or hurricane. He said initial estimated measurements showed about 6.43 inches of rainfall on Saturday and about 8 inches since the storm first hit the area on Thursday. 

“That’s extreme, very high,” Gould said. “Typically more of what we see in tropical events. Luckily it’s coming to an end.”

Gould said the Dothan area could expect a sunny and dry day today and Monday. But area residents could see another storm system hit the area on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“We definitely have a threat for maybe one to two inches of rain,” Gould said.

Workers with the Houston County Water Authority worked Saturday to repair a broken 8-inch water main. Clark Matthews, the director of the Dothan/Houston County Emergency Management, said pressure during flooding from the storm that hit the Dothan area likely caused the break around 4 p.m.

He said all homes served by Houston County Water are without water until repairs are completed. He said some water will work but at a low pressure.

“We’re asking all county residents to ration as much as they can,” Matthews said.

A collapsed water pipe led to a portion of the road crumbling in on Crawford Road, and rushing water had eaten away much of the ground underneath places on other county roads as well. Along with Crawford, damage has been reported on Glen Lawrence, Pansey, Watson, Faulk, B.J. Mixon and Decatur roads. There was also significant damage on County Road 203 near Rehobeth Baptist Church, a popular cut-through for beachgoers. Barricades were put up on the road, but state troopers had written several tickets to motorists who drove around the barricades Saturday evening.

Pool said there is no way to know how much the repairs will cost until a full evaluation is done, and portions of the road under water can’t be evaluated until the water recedes. 

It also will not be known who will pay for the repairs. If the county is declared a disaster area, federal funds will pay for the road repairs. If not, county funds may be required for the full cost.

“Either way, we’re going to get these roads fixed as soon as we can,” Pool said.

Wayland Childs stood on the side of Crawford Road, not far from the house he built in 1973, and watched the water rush underneath the road, eating away at the ground. He had been on vacation and drove in Saturday afternoon to find much of the area around his home flooded.

“I’ve never seen this much water before,” Childs said. “At least my home is still standing. Some folks in Mississippi can’t say that. I’m thankful.”

The damage was widespread enough for the county to be faced with a shortage of road barricades, forcing road crews to place barricades where the most damage was located.

County engineers will meet with Emergency Management Agency officials this morning at the EMA office to assess the situation further. 

Matthews said EMA personnel took a variety of calls Saturday from horse and cow rescue in flooded land in the Cowarts community to pet rescue and motorists stuck in the flooded roadways. He said EMA officials gave out more than 800 sandbags. 

Dothan Fire Capt. Chris Etheredge said city officials worked to restore a few isolated power outages at homes. 

According to a statement, the storm damage left 1,500 Wiregrass Electric Cooperative customers without power Saturday throughout Houston, Geneva, Coffee, Dale and Covington counties. Most of the power outages happened in the Kinsey and Cottonwood area, and nearly all the power was restored.