By Robin Jedlicka - bio | email
COOK COUNTY, GA (WALB) - After April's heavy showers, Cook County is still drying out. Flooding damaged nearly three hundred miles of road in Cook County, leaving damage estimates of more than three million dollars.
Paved and dirt roads alike were affected.
Gene Fandel, Cook County's EMA Director, says, "I believe an estimate of ten paved roads and all dirt roads (were damaged). We have 258 miles of dirt road, and something happened to all of them."
Last Friday, Cook County received the good news that they had been added to the Presidential Disaster Declaration. The county will only be receiving assistance for damage to public infrastructure.
"It's going to help us greatly," says Fandel. "If we weren't on the declaration, we'd have to front the bill for that, which would ultimately be the tax payers."
Nearly every mile of dirt road in Cook County received some degree of damage. Portions of McConnell Bridge Road and Antioch Road, which are both paved, completely caved beneath the floods. Antioch received the worst damage, as nearly 300 feet of road crumbled.
Remarkably, County workers say Antioch Road will take no more than 90 days to repair.
It wasn't just roads that were damaged. Judge Lott Bridge at the Berrien County Line will require months of rebuilding.
Though repairs are just beginning, the declaration of disaster will certainly make the process far less of a burden. Cook County is happy to report that no homeowners were displaced by the heavy rainfall.
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