First came Debby, then Helene. Now, in the latest weather calamity of 2024, a nameless stormfront that dropped from six inches to a foot of rain Wednesday night and Thursday morning washed out roads and necessitated several water rescues from homes in Bulloch County.
“We’ve got over 20 roads that are closed completely,” Bulloch County Public Works Director Dink Butler said Thursday evening, “between 20 and 25. That keeps going up here in the last hour or two. We’ve got 65 roads that we’ve responded to so far with water over the road.”
As already reported, Bulloch County Schools officials, working with the county Public Safety and Emergency Management agencies, simplified matters by closing all dirt roads to school buses for Thursday afternoon’s ride home and all day Friday. But the schools are staying open, the school system having reverted to its alternate bus transportation plan, which many families are familiar with from the days following the previous storms.
Downpours Wednesday and Thursday swamped Bulloch and Screven counties with an estimated 8 to 10 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service. Several counties were under flash flood warnings from Thursday morning into the evening.
Traffic had to be rerouted off I-16 near Statesboro after all westbound lanes were closed due to flooding, the Georgia Department of Transportation said on its website.
The Public Works Department, which includes the road crews, will be evaluating roads into the weekend and helping to advise school officials for their decisions about next week, Butler said.
“Plus, we’ve had four highwater rescues today, so it’s been a challenging day,” he added, noting that the fire departments and sheriff’s department handled the rescues.
The rescues occurred from around 8 a.m. to almost 4 p.m. Thursday. All were in the area around Sinkhole Road not far from Highway 46 in the southern part of the county, according to descriptions provided by Chief Ben Tapley of the Bulloch County Fire Department.
Emergency Medical Service personnel, responding to a medical call on Bohler Lane around 8 a.m., reportedly found flooding all around their patient’s home, made their way to the address on foot, and tried to find an alternate way to get the patient to the ambulance. But a BCFD battalion chief from Battalion 1, Register, came to assist in a Fire Department truck.
“You know we also respond to all EMS calls, but they requested the battalion chief truck,” Tapley said. “It’s a (Ford) F-250 four-wheel-drive, sits high up off the ground. He drove back in there and helped get the patient out to the ambulance.”
At 10:28 a.m., firefighters attempted a rescue of a person trapped in a home on Sinkhole Road but determined that running water made a ground rescue too risky, Tapley summarized from an incident report. They found that the Statesboro Fire Department’s Tower 1 truck was in the area facing a similar situation and was waiting on Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office personnel to bring their boat. To answer another call, county firefighters left that rescue to BCSO personnel when they arrived with the boat, according to his summary.
Another BCSO battalion chief, answering a call to a home on Sam Tillman Road at 11:09 a.m., found a man and two children unable to leave the residence because of high water and transported them to a corner store on the highway.
Then at 3:43 p.m., the BCFD responded to a call to the road named Kozy Korner in the same area, where a family member requested help moving a hospice patient from ground level to a higher part of their home as the water rose.