STORM'S DAMAGE MINIMAL

Damage from Tuesday's six-inch rainstorm in Cape Girardeau County was surprisingly light, local authorities said Wednesday.

According to weather records, Tuesday's downpour was the third wettest day here since 1907.

"Damage to city streets is minimal, and it will not take as long to get everything back in shape as we first thought," said Cape Girardeau Street Superintendent Emmett Baker Jr.

Cape Girardeau County Associate Commissioner Leonard Sander echoed Baker's assessment. "We have an awful lot of standing water out there today, but not a lot of expensive road damage," said Sander, after touring the rural areas of the county Wednesday morning with County Highway Superintendent Kenny Siebert.

Mid-America Weather Services at the airport reported a 24-hour total (midnight Monday to midnight Tuesday) of 6.05 inches.

That was about three-quarters of an inch under the all-time, 24-hour precipitation record of 6.73 inches, set on March 27, 1977.

Tuesday was the third wettest day in Cape Girardeau in 84 years, according to Al Robertson, professor of earth science at Southeast Missouri State University.

The second wettest 24-hour period in Cape Girardeau, Robertson said, was May 15, 1986, when 6.64 inches of rain fell at the airport. That storm resulted in major flooding and heavy property damage in the west end of town, along Cape LaCroix and Walker creeks.

Despite the intensity of the rain Tuesday, Sander said most of the county's gravel roads "fared pretty good." He said one reason for that is the county's dust control program. During the summer, many of the gravel roads were oiled, leaving a semi-hard surface with little opportunity for surface erosion.

The significant exception, Sander said, was United States Hill, a steep gravel road situated in the hills north of Neely's Landing. The steep terrain always ensures there will be some kind of road damage after a heavy downpour. "It's going to take a lot of work to get the road back in shape," he said.

Sander said a preliminary inspection did not indicate any structural damage to county bridges, but he added, "We'll have to wait until the water goes down to know for sure. But we do not anticipate any problems. Most of the bridges were in good enough shape to handle all the water."

Sander said a number of approaches to rural bridges were washed out, but he said most would be reopened quickly. But he said, "It's going to take a while to reopen Hartle's Ford north of Millersville because the creek was still too high to get in there and remove all of the debris on the low water bridge."

Sander said the hardest hit area was in the Big Whitewater bottoms, in the southern part of the county southwest of Gordonville, where many residents will have to use alternate routes to get to and from their homes until the creek goes down.

Sander said the water should go down quickly because the Diversion Channel is not backed up from the Mississippi River. Many of the hill creeks, including Whitewater and Hubble, drain south into the Diversion Channel.

"We've also got an awful lot of stopped up culverts all over the county that will have to be cleaned out, but overall we came through the storm in pretty good shape, certainly nothing to compare with the flooding of May 1986," Sander said.

Following an inspection of city streets, Baker said damage from Tuesday's deluge was "surprisingly light, considering the amount of rain that came down."

Baker said most of the city's secondary, gravel streets were paved with asphalt during the past three to four years. "Before these streets were paved, a rain like we had Tuesday would have caused a lot of erosion damage," he said. "We would have had to put a lot of money, manpower and material effort into getting those streets back together."

Even the remaining gravel streets in town suffered very little damage from Tuesday's storms. Baker said that's at least partly because of improved drainage. "We've done a lot of ditching along side the gravel streets so the storm water flows in the ditch and not out into the streets," he said. "That eliminates a lot of the erosion problem."

Baker said city crews will probably spend about a week cleaning out stopped-up storm sewer grates at street intersections, and removing leaves and other debris from manholes and sewer lines.

Baker said if the weather stays dry, and crews can catch up with the storm cleanup and repairs, the street department will try to get back on schedule with its fall leaf collection program.

"If the weather lets up, we may be caught up sometime next week," he said. "We're in our fourth week of collection. We were already running behind schedule on the first round of pickups because of bad weather earlier this month."

Baker said residents should not rake leaves into the street gutters where they will be washed into the sewer lines when it rains. "If you rake your leaves, rake them to the parkway, between the street and the sidewalk.

"If you live on a street without curbs, keep the leaves out of the drainage ditch alongside the street, and rake them in front of the ditch, near the street."

Baker said it's been difficult to pick up the leaves the past two years because of wet weather conditions.