Overnight storms Thursday night and into Friday morning produced heavy rain and have directly resulted in two roads inside Troup County becoming washed out, another seeing significant flooding and a host of additional roads becoming at risk of flooding or worse.
Wright Road and Bill Taylor Road had both experienced significant wash-outs by 10 a.m. ET Friday morning, and remain closed and unpassable. Floyd Road near Mountain Laurel Drive has also experienced significant flooding and is in danger of becoming compromised as well.
“Floyd Road is possibly going to be compromised, we’ll have to see how the road goes,” Troup County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Stewart Smith said Friday morning. “We’ve got several that have water on them, but these are the three that we know of that are the major concern right now.”
Per the TCSO Facebook page, the following roads and locations had reported flooding issues as of 8 am ET: Flat Shoals Church Road, Hunt Road, Murphy Road, Perry Mill Road, Laurel Lane, Floyd Road, Oak Grove Road, Salem Road, Burgess Road, Leisure Circle, Leisure Lane, Autumn Trail SR54 at Glover Road (tree down), New Franklin Road near Arby’s (two lanes flooded) and Northwoods Drive at Bailey Way. The walking track and soccer fields behind Whitesville Road Elementary School have also experience significant flooding, as of Friday morning the entire track behind the elementary school was under water.
Smith said this type of event happens every few years when a torrent of rain comes through the area.
“This happens once every couple of years, just depending on what type of rain event we get, it’s not uncommon for this to happen,” Smith said.
Roads can become washed out during significant rain and subsequent flooding when running water penetrates the ground underneath a road, causing the foundation to become compromised.
“The water will get underneath the roadbed, and water running underneath the road can compromise it,” Smith said. “Sometimes there are culverts underneath those roads and they can’t handle the water and get compromised at that point.”
As of Friday morning, Smith said it was difficult to determine when the scope of damage to county roads would be known.
“That’s hard to tell,” Smith said. “It’s not the fact that it is still raining, it’s the fact that all that water is coming north and it’s got nowhere to go.”
Check back to Lagrangenews.com for further updates throughout the day.