Flooding Closes Several County Roads
Stolen Road Sign Creates Danger

Floodwaters surrounded this home last week at the corner of St. Rt. 66 and Co. Rd. 23, north of Archbold. More than seven inches of rain and two inches of snow fell on the Archbold area between Feb. 2-8, causing widespread flooding.- photo by Mary Huber

The person or persons who stole two road closed signs and barricades last week created a potentially deadly situation.

Flooding throughout the county last week closed several roads.

Dan Leininger, German Township road superintendent, said water was across Co. Rd. G.

"It was deep enough, a car would have had trouble; a pickup would have made it," he said. Two "road closed to through traffic" signs were placed at the intersections of Co. Rds. G and 24, and Co. Rds. G and 25-2, about 7 pm, Wednesday, Feb. 6.

Later that evening, Leininger said he was applying road salt to intersections and discovered someone had stolen both signs, barricades, and the battery-operated flashing yellow lights.

"It would have been really bad if someone had come down through there," he said.

If a car, traveling at high speed, had hit the water across the road, the car could have been thrown off the road, into an area where the water was much deeper.

"They would have gone down with the car," he said.

Leininger said he replaced the missing signs.

"Stealing road signs is a really dangerous thing. You're putting people's lives in jeopardy when you do that," he said.

Josh King, township maintenance worker, told the German Township Trustees at the Monday night, Feb. 11 meeting that Ri-Sun Enterprises, Archbold, can make replacements at a cost of $119 each.

The trustees reported the theft to the Fulton County Sheriff Department.

Precipitation

Information recorded by the Archbold Wastewater Treatment plant shows that between about 8 am, Saturday, Feb. 2, and 8 am, Friday, Feb. 8, a total of 7.65 inches of rain and 2.25 inches of snow fell on the Archbold area.

During the period from 8 am, Tuesday, Feb. 5 and 8 am, Wednesday, Feb. 6, there were 5.25 inches of rain and threequarters (.75) of an inch of snow.

The United States Geological Survey maintains rivermonitoring equipment on Bean Creek near a crossroads known as Powers, Ohio. The site is on the Co. Rd. 20 bridge over the creek, about 5.2 miles east of Fayette.

That station shows Bean Creek beginning to rise Tuesday morning. It crossed flood stage of about 15 feet at about midnight Wednesday, then reached a peak of more than 18 feet later that morning.

The monitoring station recorded that flood waters began receding Wednesday night, falling below flood stage Friday morning.

Dennis Howell, Archbold village administrator, said he was not aware of any basement flooding in Archbold, and there were no areas where roads were closed.

Due to design changes at the village wastewater treatment plant, two diesel-powered portable pumps had to be used to pump treated water out of the plant into Brush Creek. Howell said this issue had been anticipated in the design of the plant, and provisions were made for the pumping operation.

One of the two village-owned pumps had mechanical problems and was replaced temporarily by a rented unit.

County

Jim Meyer, Fulton County assistant highway superintendent, said at one point, every high water sign the county owned was out guarding a flooded road, but by Friday afternoon, all but one of the closed roads had been reopened.

The one exception was Co. Rd. J, between Co. Rds. 22 and 23.

Bob Hartman, director of the Fulton County Emergency Management Agency, said the county Emergency Operations Center, or EOC, was partially opened during the flooding event.

"We made contact with the people who would be at the EOC. We contacted the Red Cross and the Health Department to cover those bases," he said.

Hartman said while no one had to be evacuated from their homes, one or two homes were totally encircled by water, to the point that the only way in or out was by boat.

"At one point, we were not sure how bad it would get," Hartman said.

Causes

Rod Creager, chief deputy engineer with the Fulton County Engineer office, attributed the flooding problems to several causes.

"A lot of things happened at the same time," he said

First, Creager said the soil was still frozen, so storm water could not soak into the ground.

Second, several catch basins in the rural drainage systems were clogged with crop residue from no-till farming operations.

"That was some of it," he said.

Compounding the problem was a break in the dikes along the Tiffin River. There was a break north of Co. Rd. M and west of Co. Rd. 21, he said. The dike is on privately-owned property, and is not the responsibility of the county, he said.

The rain that fell was a general storm that covered the area.

"Everybody got rain," he said.