Flood Damage Causing Detours and Headaches

The floodwaters are long gone in North Georgia but the damage is not. Road closures and detours are still causing headaches in Catoosa County. Mt. Pisgah Road remains shut down tonight, and we've learned it could be 2 months before it's open again.

The piece of pavement missing from the edge of Mt. Pisgah Road looks minor on first glance. But a look over side shows serious erosion making this section of roadway potentially dangerous.

Ted Pritchett lives on Mt. Pisgah, and says the detour is driving residents crazy.

"It's a main way from Ringgold to Chickamauga and Ringgold to Rock Spring, it's travelled heavily and it's affecting a lot of people," said Pritchett,

But after 2 weeks, his wife says she thought it would be back open.

"It's been real inconvenient," she said. "We can't get to the middle school without going 20 minutes out of our way so it's just real inconvenient.

It's not just the road, but the land next to it that's been washed away, including what's underneath the pavement. That's why the county says it could take as long as a month to get the road back open.

This afternoon county manager Mike Helton told us this section has been qualified for emergency repair. Since the county has seen cutbacks, Helton says they don't have the manpower to properly fix it, so they'll offer the work to private companies. But, those bids take time.

As for the detour, Helton knows it's a struggle for drivers, but says it's simply unsafe. and the rest of the road will crumble as well, eventually. He said they actually began monitoring Mt. Pisgah even before the flood, so the engineering repair work has already been completed. He expects all the work to be done in 45 to 60 days.

You can CLICK HERE for more information and detour routes.