The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

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March 13, 2010

Residents stunned that road washed away

By Brad Johnson Register-Herald Reporter

Imagine waking up in the morning and finding that the main road leading to your home had been washed away by floodwaters in the night. That was exactly the shock awaiting Shady Lake Drive residents in Shady Spring Saturday morning.

“It looks like somebody took a knife and cut the road in two,” said William Houchins, who lives about 200 yards from the gaping hole where the road once was. “My wife said, ‘Where’s the debris?’ It’s like the whole road just disappeared.”

The driving rain that slammed Raleigh County late Friday night and early Saturday left a major mark on Shady Lake Drive.

“Sometime after midnight the entire road failed,” said Chris Metzger, whose home is about 150 yards away. “There was a culvert underneath the road there probably 10 to 15 feet deep. That raging water overloaded that culvert and we’ve got a big hole in the ground now. Somebody could have easily driven into that hole.”

In fact, it was Metzger who first discovered the road damage through a late-night phone call.

“My 20-year-old daughter called and said at 1:30 a.m. this morning that she couldn’t get her car to our house,” Metzger said. “We went outside to see what she meant and couldn’t believe what had happened.

“My buddy and I were out at 2 a.m. setting up barrels to keep people from driving into it,” he said.

“There’s a lot of damage from the winter on that road, a lot of potholes. If the road was in good condition, she might’ve been going faster and driven straight into the hole,” Metzger said. “I just thank God nobody got hurt.”

Now many residents of Shady Lake Drive will have to take another route to and from their homes, at least temporarily.

“We have another road, but it’s not a favorable route,” Metzger said. “There’s about 100 houses out here that use that road as a primary route.”

“Everybody up here on the hill will have to go out the back way, which is partly a dirt road and sometimes only passable by four-wheel drive,” Houchins said. “There’s also a trailer park farther on up the hill and this was their main road, too.”

Houchins said he has worked in the past to get the state to “adopt” the road. “Several years ago, the subdivision residents pitched in to have it repaved,” he said. “Hopefully the state can give us some help now.”

“We’re in the process of seeing who we need to talk to about getting it fixed,” Metzger said. “With the amount of problems going on today, I didn’t feel right about calling emergency services and bugging them about this.

“When I heard there was a fireman who was trying to execute a rescue and hadn’t been found, that was pretty humbling. There are worse problems today than our road.”

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

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