The Flood
I went home after working Saturday night and took a short nap. At 1230 I was up and ventured out with my camera. A lot of the water from flooding was already gone, but I did get some areas that were still flooded in Martinsville and a lot of photos of the damage caused within a mile of where we live.
This is around 3 miles from our house. This field was completely under water even across the road on Saturday morning.
This is Paragon Road, there is White River access right where the small patch of trees are in the center of these two photos. I am standing about a quarter mile from Highway 67 which runs straight through the middle of Paragon. On Saturday morning the water was all the way into town. Ninety percent of the town was under water.
These railroad tracks run right along Highway 67 all the way from Paragon to Martinsville. You can see where the water washed away all the stone that supports the track.
These photos are all of the White River. The river boundaries are on the other side of the trees. I am standing at the edge of Highway 67 and you can see that it is still overflowed to just about 4 feet from the edge of the road here.
This is on the other side of the river. The previous photos are at the junction of Highway 67 and the 39 bypass. Here I have went around the corner over the river and am standing along the edge of 39.
This is my cousins small engine repair shop. It’s about a half mile down 39, you can see it’s still under water. He said that everything inside is floating around.
This is a barn that sits behind a neighborhood on 39, still under water.
These homes and businesses are still under water on the other side of 39 from where I’m standing. The motor homes are sitting behind the Kmart shopping center where there are quite a few businesses. (Including my Starbucks)
At this point I’ve gone the rest of the way down the 39 bypass and connected to Highway 37, turned north and went about a half mile to the Taco Bell which is still underwater.
These businesses on the other side of Highway 37 from where I’m standing are in the same area as the Kmart and my Starbucks. Everything here is still under water, and the area is closed.
After this I went north on 37 and passed all the car dealerships and WalMart which were previously under water. Most of them are free of water and are in the process of being cleaned. Along the highway I saw two of the huge ice chests where you purchase ice like at the gas station. They floated from somewhere I’m guessing the Marathon or Shell station along the highway.
These are of the fields on each side of Duckworth Road which is where we turn off of Highway 67 to go home. These fields were all under water and water was across the roads.
This is one of the creeks along Duckworth Road, it is usually pretty dry, but you can see that the water which was there on Saturday washed a bunch of tree parts and twigs down the creek.
These are photos of Warthen Road, the last road before Olive Church Road where we live. The water here was across the road and there were numerous mudslides.
You can see here where the road buckled from where water underneath the road pushed the road up. There is a drainage pipe under the road here.
Later in the evening we went back into town to have dinner before taking the kids to the drive-in and took the following photos.
Here’s the business district next to Kmart along with a neighborhood between the 39 bypass and Highway 37. This was after 7pm Sunday night so you can see how quickly things cleared up in just a day and a half. Unfortunately though people in the southern part of town were still without power at this time. Power wasn’t restored until late Monday morning for these people. Our phones went out sometime late Saturday morning and were finally working again late Monday.
While making these trips around town I had the experience of seeing people walking about town who were displaced from their homes. In Paragon people were just walking around looking in disbelief at the damage caused by the flood. In Martinsville when we made the trip over the White River bridge we noticed people who had been evacuated from their homes camping in trucks and sitting in lawn chairs on the banks of the river. I realize at times like these just how fortunate we are and will hopefully not be quite as irritated when we have our frequent, but always short power and phone outages.
