Scott City tries to assess damage from wind, floods

It may take a few weeks to see the full effects of Thursday night's flash floods in Scott City.

A second day of storms hit the town about 6:30 p.m. Thursday, causing flash flooding in the area and some severe damage to several houses and felling trees.

Scott City Police Sgt. Jacob Marberry said in the five years he's worked there, he's never seen that much flooding so quickly. Two to three feet of water was found in some areas of Main Street.

The National Weather Service in Paducah, Kentucky, reported a microburst during the storm, in which a localized column of sinking air is caused by a small and intense downdraft during a thunderstorm. The air does not spin like it would during a tornado. The NWS recorded the damage path was 1.6 miles long, a half-mile wide and lasted two minutes. Maximum wind speeds were 75 mph.

Total rainfall at Cape Girardeau Regional Airport, the weather service's nearest rain gauge, from 7 a.m. Thursday to 7 a.m. Friday was 1.47 inches.

Sections of road were closed along Cherry Street, Pennington Street and Main Street for about three hours until the water subsided. Marberry also said flooding caused a basement to collapse at a house on Mulberry Street, causing entrapment, but the person was unharmed. There also were reports of trees that had fallen onto houses.

The timing of potential damage to Main Street, also known as Route M, couldn't have come at a better time, said Matt Seiler, assistant district engineer for the Missouri Department of Transportation's southeast region.

The city is working on its center turn lane project and soon will begin construction on the street. So if flooding caused any damage, contractors will be able to fix it as they go, Seiler said.

"There's two main reasons why a road would be damaged," Seiler said, "if the water is swift because of a river or creek is out of its bank and erodes away the road, or if the rising water can't drain and damages the subgrade under the pavement."

If the subgrade is damaged, Seiler said the road would get soft and soggy in places and become uneven or form potholes that could take weeks to form.

Seiler said he's never really thought of Route M as a problem area before, and said hillier areas or roads near creeks or the Diversion Channel tend to go underwater more often.

"The ground is also just saturated right now," he said. "With the river being up, there's just nowhere for the water to go."

smaue@semissourian.com

388-3644

pertinent address:

Scott City, Missouri