County officials encourage caution as roads see major flooding
By Danielle Abbott
When water began to creep over the county roads, few county officials and residents could honestly say that they were stunned. "I did expect that we would have some flooding issues this year with all of the snow that we had earlier," said McLean County highway superintendent Ron Wagner. Many areas throughout the county saw record breaking, or near record, snowfalls this winter, and with temperatures rising quickly, that fast thaw means that water has nowhere to go. For McLean County officials, they are in the first steps of assessing damage and dealing with problem areas. McLean County auditor Les Korgel said, "FEMA is meeting with us today (April 14) to start doing visual inspections of several locations." Korgel continued to say that for the majority of the county, the rapid snow melt began three and four days ago, and that so far it has just been hard to determine the precise areas and extent of flooding. "I’m just guessing but I would say that Butte, Turtle Lake and Max areas are going to be pretty bad," Korgel said, "Garrison and west could be pretty bad too, then again we have also had some flooding in Washburn, so it is really spread out."
