Residents of Good Hope found themselves unable to go out on the roads Friday night as the rain overwhelmed the waterways and flooded the streets. Fortunately, the flooding was short-lived, and most roads were passable later in the evening and the rest were reopened Saturday morning.
On Tuesday, Wayne Township Fire Chief Chris Wysong said, “Everything’s receded now. We just have ground that’s saturated.”
The rain and flooding were so severe that some pavement was washed away from State Route 753. As a result, the road was closed until Saturday morning when the Ohio Department of Transportation assessed the road and bridge before allowing it to be opened to drivers.
Wysong said the cause of the flooding was that “it was just more water than the waterways could handle in that short period of time. The last time I’ve seen any kind of water like that… was probably seven or eight years ago,” he added.
Wysong said he doesn’t have an official measure of how much rain fell during the storm, but Good Hope residents with rain gauges have estimated it to be between six and eight inches.
Some property damage has been reported. Wysong said this damage mainly consisted of sheds and storage buildings that were flooded out. In addition, one house was struck by lightning. Fortunately, the lightning struck the house’s chimney, so there was no fire and no one was injured. The strike did, however, cause some property damage and electrical issues. Two abandoned houses were also flooded.
Wysong was grateful that the flooding primarily resulted in “just people inconvenienced by the road closures.”
“Thankfully no one was hurt,” he said. “So that always makes everything better in the end that there were no injuries involved.”
