News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Jackson County recovering from significant flooding that damaged utilities and highways Saturday night into Sunday morning.
EMA Public Information Officer Derek Woolbright said Dodson Branch Highway saw intense flooding with several areas that had stop signs completely submerged. Woolbright said the flooding widespread with high waters seen along Flynns Creek Road and road closures in Gainesboro.
“It seemed like we had about an hour there from around midnight to 1:00am to where we just saw extremely, extremely heavy downpours of rain and I think that played a large factor in it,” Woolbright said. “‘Cause shortly after that time was when we really started getting a lot of calls about flooding.”
Woolbright said the water has receded for the most part but the floods caused a large amount of damage to roadways and waterlines throughout the area. Woolbright said there are currently no road closures and water service is almost completely restored, but it will likely take several weeks for roads to be fully repaired.
“My boss is actually out with TEMA this morning doing some damage assessments and meeting with some other department heads to kind of figure how much, exactly the extent of the damage that we’ve seen,” Woolbright said.
Woolbright said water service was impacted for about one hundred fifty local residents on Sunday. Woolbright said the county is urging people to be extra careful while driving even though the roads are not officially closed.
“There’s just some spots on these roads that are extremely rough and washed out,” Woolbright said. “And then there’s, course when you have flood waters that brings debris with it and there’s a lot of areas of debris.”
Woolbright said there were no reported injuries from the storm but there was one water rescue that took place around 4:00am on Sunday morning. Woolbright said two people had to be extracted from an Airbnb built along the Roaring River because the water was only a couple feet from getting to the residence.
“The two or three closest paths to get to the location we were trying to extract the people from were all too flooded for us to get to so we actually ended up having to come to them off of Morrison Creek Road,” Woolbright said. “And it required us, essentially the boat crew, they put their rescue boat into flood waters in the middle of Morrison Creek Road and they traveled about a mile in flood waters to get to the residents.”
Woolbright said a couple vehicles were swept away by the floods but neither of them had anyone inside.
