They Came For The Road Plan, Stayed For The Disaster
PHOTO | Greg Wells – At the site of the topless bridge on Homer Grider Road are, background to foreground, District 2 Magistrate Lane Cope, Byron Reeve with Stephen Bean’s company, County Judge-Executive Luke King, KyTC District 8 Chief Engineer James Jones, and the district’s planning engineer, Jeff Dick. They came out Friday to observe the damage to the bridge, which has completely cut off families from the main road.
District Road engineers review damage to county bridges, bad news relayed
By Greg Wells
CCN-Editor
Last Friday morning representatives from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s District 8 headquarters came by to visit with local leaders about the state road plan.
However, County Judge-Executive Luke King called for a special meeting of the fiscal court to allow magistrates to sit in for not just that discussion, but a discussion over recent road damage due to flooding.
Magistrates Randall Wray and Lane Cope from districts one and two respectively listened as Jeff Dick, who overseas planning for the district and James Jones, the chief district engineer, went over improvements, reconstructions, relocations and even a bypass that are proposed for Cumberland County.
King, and Burkesville mayor Laurel Irby had input for the gentleman on these issues, before King called a special meeting of the court for the magistrates to engage with the engineers on the present problems in the county.
Three bridges were their chief concern.
The Homer Grider Bridge just off KY-704 near the Adair County line, in district one was Wray’s issue.
PHOTO | Greg Wells – Head of this area’s Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Office, District 8 Chief Engineer James Jones, Climbed off the “bridge” into Brush Creek to examine the situation last Friday. He said the structure was built in a way that fights against the water, which causes most of the damage to it.
“There are 13 4-foot by 24-foot tiles that are still there in Crocus Creek,” Wray said. “But the bridge deck is gone.”
He asked if the road experts would be willing to come out and give their opinion on the situation.
“There are 30 tiles making up the bridge on brush Creek spur,” said Cope. “They call it a bridge but the way it was built it works more like a beaver dam.”
That small road is north, below KY-1880, off String Ridge.
Jones said, “I can look at them and give my suggestions, no charge.”
It was well after lunch when the tour broke up, with Jones promising to send one of the districts bridge engineers over to look at the damage to those two and the Chism bridge in Marrowbone.
That engineer did come by Monday, but the news was not very good.
“I’ve been told by the folks up in Frankfurt that the ‘emergency fund’ has been consumed by all the damage in eastern Kentucky,” King said.
To add insult to injury, he added, the only one of the three damaged bridges that is on the states list of bridges is the one on Chism Road.
“Even without the emergency money, if those bridges had been declared to the state, we would be able to ask for grant money that could have covered 80% of the cost of rebuilding those bridges,” King explained.
Both of those bridges have had repeated incidents over the years according to King and the magistrates. He opined that it is possible that the bridges were not presented to the state because the state would have objected to the way they were built.
As it stands, King was waiting Monday to hear back from any suggestions the bridge engineer would have, with an eye towards getting beds for the repairs as soon as possible.
Sadly, it may be that the only way the county can rebuild from the flood damage will be to use State Road fund money due at the end of this month, King said.
He has previously said that Federal Emergency Management Agency funds previously allocated to the county have been so badly mismanaged and misspent that FEMA is no longer willing to put money into Cumberland County until those accounts have been put right.
