ROUNDUP — Wide ditches in the middle of the road are now a normal sight for one Roundup community. After receiving two inches of rain in 30 minutes Monday night, residents are right back to where they started two weeks ago, when heavy rains first washed out their roads.
“It was torrential downpour. Thunder, lightning, no hail but the water. When it rains that much that fast, there’s not a whole lot you can do but get out of the way,” said Roundup resident Samantha Nicks on Tuesday.
It’s almost a repeat of what happened at the beginning of the month.
“The first of June, we had six inches of rain in an hour. Last night, we had two inches of rain in a half hour,” Roundup resident Kathy Hower said.
That torrential downpour created a continuous battle and one residents can’t seem to win. Their roads were basically destroyed for the entire month of June.
“Bender (Road) now has a river running on the south side of it down here for about a good half mile,” said Nicks.
The holes on Bender Road have already been repaired twice this last month.
“Anderson Underground came and they refilled the holes last week. And they’ve been out here for at least seven business days now, working and filling holes. Now it’s all gone again,” Nicks said.
Bender, Log Cabin, and Kelly Roads make up this community and all have been damaged.
“This whole area was covered with water. It was about two, three feet deep and about 30, 40 feet wide,” said Hower.
Hower lives on Kelly Road and was trapped in her residence until the rain stopped.
“This small community is responsible to maintain these roads. We’ve put probably over $15,000 so far in the repairs already,” Hower said.
Because these roads are privately owned, the county isn’t able to repair them.
“If we wanted to incorporate into county roads, we have to fix these roads and get them up to par, and everybody in the community has to sign off on that,” said Hower.
Both Hower and Nicks agree that they don’t see that happening, and now that they’ve exhausted the money raised through online donations, they’re looking for another solution.
“The next option for us is we’re going to go down to the commissioners' office on Friday and hope that they will be able to hear our story,” Hower said.
They’re now seeking an infrastructure or road engineer who might point them in the right direction to repair the roads.
“None of us are road engineers and we just want to fix it where we’re not going to have to do it every time it rains really hard,” said Nicks.
The community is still in need of donations as they’ve depleted their emergency funds. Click here to help.
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