Flooding causes over $1 million of damage in Whitley County

Whitley County has suffered over $1 million in flood damage due to recent rains and rising rivers, and the county is still tabulating the damage.

Whitley County Projects Director Amber Owens said that more than 40 hours were directly affected by flooding.

Whitley County Judge-Executive Pat White Jr. noted that some homes were affected more so than others.

While some homes had flood damage throughout, other homes only had flood damage in the basement or lower levels. Some of those lower levels were finished basements. In other cases, owners lost riding lawn mowers, zero-degree turn radius lawn mowers, various types of tools and equipment, and so forth, White said.

White noted that the University of the Cumberlands football stadium had flooding up to the door handle level in its locker rooms, as well as possible damage to some electrical equipment.

Wolf Creek Power Pack Ministries also sustained flooding damage. Many of the structures and areas of the Sally Gap Pumpkin Patch were affected by flooding, but floodwaters didn’t affect the owners’ personal residence, White said.

White said there is one road slide that the county has sustained, which is passable for now, but will probably require rail and cribbing for a more permanent solution.

In terms of flooding damage, the floodwall spared Williamsburg from suffering heavy damage, but portions of Whitley County weren’t so lucky.

Williamsburg Mayor Roddy Harrison said that there were some people affected on North Sixth Street area around Siler Street and some parts of First Street.

Harrison praised the work for first responders, who sometimes worked 20 hours straight helping save everything trapped by floodwaters from babies to pigs

Harrison said that he isn’t aware of any roads that were damaged by the floods, but portions of George Hayes Road are still underwater.

“The floodwall really helped the city,” Harrison added. “It could have been a heck of a lot worse … I feel bad about the people in the county, who will be dealing with this for another week.”