Starke County Highway Department Assessing Roads after Flood Event

Posted on March 7, 2018
Author Anita Goodan, WKVI

Crews from the Starke County Highway Department continue to assess road damage due to the recent flood event.

Starke County Highway Superintendent Rik Ritzler told the commissioners Monday night that the first stage of flood management is nearly complete.

“That was mostly damage prevention, safety precautions like the road closures and the bridge closures,” said Ritzler. “We closed two bridges for precautionary reasons on the Yellow River on 300 E. and 700 E. Both have been inspected by a bridge inspection engineer and are now open. At one point, we had 65 miles of roadways closed to traffic. We now have 26.”

The second phase of flood management includes assessing road damage and road repairs.

“Most of the bad damage is going to be where those 26 miles of roads are flooded now. We’ve already driven through them and we know they’re already torn up and we’ll have some major repairs to do. We don’t know the extent of that yet and we will know once the water is gone. I talked to [Starke County Surveyor] Bill Crase today and that flooding should be gone in about a week.”

Ritzler added that two large culverts have been replaced on 750 S. just east of 975 E. and 700 S. between 200 W. and 250 W.

The summer road improvement list will change drastically with all of the flood damage. Ritzler is concerned that flood waters may have deteriorated some bridges.

“They’re cleared now, but it may have accelerated some of that deterioration on those bridges. We will see when the formal inspections happen in October.

All townships in Starke County were involved in flood recovery.

When all of the damage is repaired, Ritzler estimates the cost of labor and material to be over $500,000, based on the FEMA reimbursement tables. All work will be carefully documented for FEMA reimbursement.