With flood waters slowly receding the extent of damage left behind is becoming apparent.

“It’s a mess right now,” said DeKalb Director of Highways Danny Hale regarding the destruction left behind by torrential rains that hit Friday and Saturday on the heels of steady precipitation earlier in the week. “We’ve got some roads just falling away.”

Hale said the lakes around the county are the highest he can remember seeing them. However, the damage isn’t just limited to road that were overtaken by flood water.

“Some of these problems are on hills where the ground was so saturated underneath them that the road just washed away,” Hale revealed, adding fixing the extensive damage will be expensive. “Right now we’ve got one lane open on most roads except for Austin Bottom where we’ve had to get traffic to bypass the area.”

While the rain is likely through until Thursday, a balancing act on the waterways throughout the mid-state continues as the Army Corps of Engineers tries to judiciously release water from its dams. Those releases, Hale said, were to place Johnson Chapel Road under water for a while Tuesday, Feb. 26.

Hale said the roads with damage include, but are not limited to Holmes Creek, Davis Hollow, Smith Fork, Falling Water, Park Drive, Harbor Point and Austin Bottom. There is also damage of Lancaster Highway (Highway 141) that forced its closure.

Motorists traveling any of the effected roads should use extreme caution given the instability of the ground underneath the roads. There will also be numerous crewmen working to repair the issues so motorists should also be mindful of workers.