Officials assess flood damage

Garland County officials said all county roads are passable after the area’s most significant rain event in almost a year.

The 2.54 inches reported Saturday at Hot Springs Memorial Field was the most rain to fall at the airport since the 2.63 inches reported June 26. A 0.42-accumulation was reported Sunday, raising April’s precipitation total to 6.99 inches.

County Road Commissioner Tony Breshears said Monday that the road department worked from early Sunday to late that afternoon clearing downed trees from roads.

He said crews cleared trees from Mount Carmel Road, Amity Road, Lost Creek Road and in the Akers Road neighborhood.

“There were a lot of trees down all over,” he said. “People are still calling them in. All the roadways are open, but we have to get the trees we’ve cleared cut up and hauled off.”

Officials said rising water washed out parts of Little Blakely Creek Road in several spots, and the creek that empties into the Middle Fork of the Saline River

north of Hot Springs Village displaced a bridge on Talley Cemetery Road.

“It picked it up and moved it about six inches to the right,” County Judge Rick Davis said.

Garland County Department of Emergency Management Director Bo Robertson said flooding damaged about a dozen roads and bridges. In addition to Little Blakely Creek and Talley Cemetery roads, Robertson said flooding damaged Murders Loop, Cedar Mountain Trail, Ragweed Valley Road, the intersection of Meyers Creek and Old Dallas roads, Powell Road, Doggett Drive, Ketchum Circle and Peaceful Hills Drive.

Pearcy Road north of the bridge over Big Mazarn Creek was also damaged. A main tributary of Lake Hamilton, the creek rose quickly as trees along the shoreline impeded flow after rising water uprooted them into the waterway.

Davis, who lives near the bridge, said the stoppage backed up water to the intersection of Pearcy and Caddo Gap roads. Gravel deposited by a smaller creek emptying into the Big Mazarn north of the bridge added to the obstruction, inundating the road before buckling the section north of the bridge.

Davis used his own backhoe Sunday to remove broken asphalt and debris and reopen the road to traffic.

“The water was at least 6 feet over the bridge,” Davis said.

The creek’s expansive basin can raise its water level even when it’s not raining, Davis said. From its source in central Montgomery County southeast of Mount Ida, the Big Mazarn absorbs numerous tributaries as it meanders toward Lake Hamilton.

“It has a large drainage area,” Davis said. “It goes almost to the center of Montgomery County, and everything that collects in that area winds up in it. I’ve seen it rise as much as a foot in an hour and it not even be raining in Garland County. It’s all the runoff from out west.”

Boat docks along the creek that were washed into Lake Hamilton by fast-moving currents during flooding in May 2015 led the Garland County Quorum Court to adopt an ordinance requiring dock owners to post their addresses on docks.

Robertson and Davis said the weekend storm damage didn’t rise to the level of the May 2015 event that led to a federal disaster declaration.

“This was pretty bad, but not as bad as we’ve seen it since I’ve been county judge,” Davis said. “It seems like this happens every April or May.”

Davis said some roads that regularly get washed out during significant rain events have been rebuilt to better withstand flooding, They held up over the weekend, but he said many county roads are in low-lying areas prone to flooding.

“A lot of these are basically wagon roads from the past that have been widened and had a chip and seal put on them,” Davis said. “They’re not real well thought out roads, but they probably seemed like a good idea 100 years ago.”

Improvements to Deerpark Road in the Fountain Lake area withstood the South Fork of the Saline River topping its banks over the weekend, Robertson said. During heavy rains, a bend in the river downstream from the Deerpark bridge can cause a bottleneck, sending water into a low-lying area west of the bridge.

The water usually washes out the road, but large rocks the road department placed alongside it and reinforced with concrete combined with new drainage pipes to keep the road intact.

“It held up to a major flood and is still passable,” Robertson said.