Many roads and bridges reopen, easing weary drivers’ long-distance commutes

Wed, 10/04/2017 - 8:00pm admin

The question asked most frequently of county commissioners and MoDOT personnel during the past week in Ozark County has probably been, “When?” Residents throughout the county were eager to know when roads and bridges would be repaired and reopened as they endured long detours around road closures and bridge outages caused by the April 28-30 flooding.At press time Tuesday, Ozark County’s MoDOT supervisors, whose crews worked 100 hours or more during the past week, including on Monday’s Truman birthday state holiday, had good news for area drivers:• The Highway 181 bridge had Hodgson Mill reopened Thursday (although a MoDOT website carried inaccurate closure information for several days causing some confusion about whether or not it was really open).• Tecumseh Bridge on Highway 160 reopened late Friday, to the relief of hundreds of drivers who had been forced to travel from Gainesville to West Plains by way of Mountain Home, Arkansas, and Bakersfield. • If all goes as planned, Patrick Bridge on H Highway is expected to reopen late Wednesday or sometime Thursday, says MoDOT’s Dora shed supervisor Shawn Shipley.• Bell Bridge on Highway 95 over Bryant Creek (just north of Ozark County) is also expected to be reopened by midweek, according to MoDOT’s Gainesville supervisor, Rodney Yost. • The Highway 95 bridge over Spring Creek near Souder is expected to be reopened by this weekend, Yost said.• The JJ Highway near Thornfield was scheduled for closure on June 1 so that MoDOT could replace it. Because it was scheduled to close anyway, that bridge will not be reopening before it’s rebuilt. Yost said it’s hoped that the additional excavation work needed to repair the bridge’s storm-damaged approaches can added to the current bridge-building contract. • Two other state bridges – CC Highway at Hammond Camp and James Bridge on PP Highway – were swept away by the floodwaters and will be out of commission for many months. County roads and woesAfter a hard-earned day off Monday in observance of the Truman holiday, Ozark County Road and Bridge crews were back at work Tuesday, continuing to repair the damage Mother Nature did to county roadways during the April 28-30 floods.“The guys were simply exhausted,” said Ozark County Eastern District Commissioner Gary Collins, describing the employees’ long hours during the past week. Due to the holiday, the county commission did not meet on Monday, but eastern and western district commissioners Gary Collins and Greg Donley provided some updates to the Times.Both commissioners said restoring county roads back to the shape they were in pre-flood will take a long time. Although the county has managed to make nearly every road in the county passable, some can only be driven in four-wheel-drive vehicles. Getting them back to “practical” condition is a different matter, Donley said. And while commissioners believe no Ozark County resident continues to be trapped in their home, as happened immediately following the storms, some county roads remain impassable and are closed to through traffic.In addition, many roads will remained closed at low-water crossings for a long time, the commissioners said, because, rather than being covered by rivers and creeks, which rise and recede quickly, these roads are covered by Bull Shoals and Norfork lakes, and the lakes are expected to remain high for the foreseeable future. For example, on the west side, these crossings remain closed: Haskins Ford, Steel Tracks, Gooley at Pontiac and Turkey Creek at Theodosia. East side roads that remained closed because of high water in Norfork Lake include Smokey Road and County Road 318 at Dawt. County Road 349 is also closed.In general, county bridges suffered damage to their approaches and asphalt while the bridges themselves remained mostly intact. Donley said several low-water crossings suffered major damage and will need to be repaired or replaced, but unlike the state, which had several bridges closed or destroyed, “the county hasn’t lost any whole bridges,” Donley said.Collins said Warren Bridge on County Road 328 will be impassable for “quite awhile.” The bridge is still standing, Collins said, but the road approach on the east side is badly damaged with a washed-out area that has created a 4- to 5-foot drop-off to the water.The bridge at Dawt Mill on County Road 318 is still an unknown as it remains covered by floodwaters. But Collins is optimistic that the bridge is still there and is intact.Back on the west side, County Road 142 between Souder and Rockbridge is closed in places, as is County Road 915 near Longrun. Locust Road (County Road 603), a much-used connector between Highway 160 west and W Highway near Pontiac, has a low-water slab that has washed out, making the road passable only in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Financial worriesDonley estimated the cost of repairing Ozark County’s roads and bridge to be near $3 million – with around $2 million of those damages being on the east side of the county. The commissioners are hoping government funds may be available and are watching closely to see when – and if – the area comes under a federal disaster declaration, which would make more aid available, especially through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “There’s no way the county budget can fix this,” said Collins. “So unless FEMA helps, I don’t know how we’ll get it all fixed.”

This aerial photo, taken by Brenda Uhlmann, shows the CC Highway bridge at Hammond Camp, which washed away in the April 28-30 floods. Officials say it will be months before the bridge, which stood about 40 feet above the North Fork of the White River, can be replaced.

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Many roads and bridges reopen, easing weary drivers’ long-distance commutes

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