“I’ve seen seven county roads that have washed out,” Miller County Road Director Eric Cunningham told the news agency, adding that County Road 206 was temporarily mended. “Worse than that, we have a whole lot of culverts washed out. It’s all this flash flooding. I estimate we got about 5 to 7 inches (of rain) last night in about 5 hours. The drains out here aren’t going to hold up to that kind of rain.”
David Splater, the county’s roadmaster, who helped Cunningham assess the damage and flooding to roadways throughout the county told the news agency, “This is the first time I can even remember water going over (U.S.) Highway 71 down near the Kiblah community and the Louisiana line.”
Fouke Mayor Terry Purvis lauded their efforts at clearing roadways and assessing damage to get roads passable Friday and Saturday. He told the news agency that workers had also moved 10 to 12 trees that fell across county roads Friday night. He blamed it on an overabundance of rain for much of the last year that left the soil in rural areas saturated with water, causing the trees to fall over.
“We got the first call out at 10 o’clock (Friday) night and have been out since 5 o’clock this (Saturday) evening, trying to get these roads passable,” Purvis told the news agency.
