The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

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  • Division of Highways’ crew members wait for a truck to bring gravel to a small bridge on Airport Road in Beaver Monday. Floodwater washed away supporting compounds from beneath a small bridge between 84 Lumber and China Star Chinese Restaurant in Beaver, causing the road to be shut down. Division of Highways’ crew supervisor Johnny Bass said they planned to pour gravel beneath the bridge and around it. Christopher J. Jackson

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March 15, 2010

Crews still working to reopen major road artery

By Christopher J. Jackson Register-Herald Reporter

— A portion of Airport Road in Beaver closed by flood damage since early Saturday should re-open this morning, DOH officials say.

Floodwater washed away supporting compounds from beneath a small bridge between 84 Lumber and China Star Chinese Restaurant in Beaver, causing the road to be shut down.

The Beaver area was the hardest-hit during the weekend’s flooding in Raleigh County, said Marty Agee, deputy director of Raleigh County Emergency Services Center, and while the majority of closed roads re-opened over the weekend, the bridge on Airport Road has remained impassable.

Karen Zamow, a spokeswoman in the Department of Transportation’s communications office in Charleston, said crews have been working as quickly as possible to make the bridge passable.

“They hope to have it open this evening,” she said Monday. “There’s a culvert there in a particular section. The culvert remained intact, but high water washed away the surface.”

Division of Highways’ crew supervisor Johnny Bass said they planned to pour gravel beneath the bridge and around it. He said they also had to tear out a section of the road and fill it with gravel.

“The water ate under the asphalt,” he said at the site. “Three to four feet of the road will be gravel.”

He said this kind of damage is typical given the amount of flooding the area received, but it was “bad.”

Bass said that during the closure, motorists were re-routed through Orchard Woods Drive in order to get to the other side of the bridge.

Zamow said crews had to use gravel to patch the bridge because asphalt isn’t available until spring.

Ed Alderson, who owns a business near the bridge and drives the road often, said it wasn’t as bad as he thought it was.

“It’s all Mother Nature,” he said, looking at the bridge. “All a part of living in the mountains — too much snow on the ground and too much rain.”

— E-mail: cjackson@register-herald.com

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