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State of Emergency Declared for Roads In Marshall County

Frohnapfel: Road conditions are ‘deteriorating quickly’

Photo by Alan Olson Traffic passes a crumbling section of road on Big Grave Creek Road.

MOUNDSVILLE — It’s official: Marshall County’s roads have deteriorated to the point that commissioners have declared an emergency.

The Marshall County Commission made the declaration Tuesday — one day after a particularly serious slip occurred on Sally’s Backbone, a rural ridge that at least three school buses travel daily. While county officials have heard complaints and had concerns about road conditions for years, County Administrator Betsy Frohnapfel said the Monday incident prompted commissioners to act.

“That was the specific incident that made us say, ‘Look, we really need to do something to get people’s attention,'” Frohnapfel said. “As spring has started, the freeze-thaw cycle this year really took a toll and things are deteriorating quickly.”

Frohnapfel pointed out that Marshall is a very large county, encompassing 500 square miles. She said that is as large as Ohio, Brooke and Hancock counties combined. That means the West Virginia Division of Highways District 6 office, which covers the Northern Panhandle, has as many or more miles of roadways to repair and maintain within Marshall County as it does in almost the entire rest of its territory.

Frohnapfel stressed, though, that neither she nor the commissioners believe that the DOH is neglecting its duties in Marshall County. Instead, they believe District 6 crews are doing the best they can with limited manpower, equipment and resources.

“Our belief is that the people in Charleston don’t realize how large and rural Marshall County is,” Frohnapfel said. “The terrain and infrastructure in the Northern Panhandle are so different from other parts of the state.

“They don’t understand the severity of what the local (DOH) district is dealing with, what residents are dealing with,” she continued. “We would love to have a representative of the governor, the Department of Transportation, the Division of Highways come and see. We would get a school bus and take them on these roads — the roads that fire trucks and EMS have to use.”

The incident Monday reinforced that school buses and the students riding on them are in danger from deteriorating roads as well.

“To us it’s a safety issue for the traveling public,” she said, adding that it is important that fire, law enforcement and emergency medical personnel be able to get to all parts of the county. “Now it’s become a bus safety issue, a child safety issue.”

Beth Bertram, interim transportation director for Marshall County Schools, agreed that there are concerns about the safety of buses traveling in many parts of the county.

“We have a tremendous amount of roads that are literally caving in,” she said. “Some have slipped over the bank, some have blacktop but they are eroded underneath — it looks like you are on a good road and you’re not.”

Bertram said some bus routes have been altered as a result, taking buses away from areas where they could slip over a steep embankment if the edge of the road were to collapse. She pointed out that many of the county’s buses weigh about 18,000 pounds before they are loaded with children. When such a large vehicle passes over a “questionable surface,” she said, it is “really scary.”

“We’ve done things to keep them away from that,” she noted. “We just hope that we stay one step ahead of it.”

When the major slip covered Sally’s Backbone on Monday, Bertram said one bus driver actually parked her bus and measured the amount of pavement that was available to drive on and then measured the dual wheels on the bus. The driver found she had just 2 spare inches of pavement to drive on. As a result, the bus was rerouted and used a dirt road to get around the area. DOH crews responded to the incident and cleared the roadway, Bertram said, cutting back into the hillside and filling the ditch with gravel so vehicles can drive on it. Buses are using that route again for the time being, but Bertram said it appears the slip may worsen.

“I would not want to be in charge of (the DOH) in our county,” Bertram said. “They are trying, but there are not enough people or equipment. I call almost daily.”

Bertram said other problem areas include Fourth Street in Moundsville, its extension across the county to the east known as Middle Grave Creek Road, Big Grave Creek Road and Fish Creek Road, which she termed “absolutely dreadful.” She said all roads that run along creeks in the county are concerning, because if a bus would tip over off the edge of one of them, the vehicle would land in the water.

Even as Bertram was discussing the issue with The Intelligencer on Wednesday, she received word that one local road being used by buses to transport students home had been reduced to one lane.

One positive development Bertram mentioned was that several energy companies operating in the area have contacted her to see what they can do to help. She said it was too early Wednesday to name the companies that had extended the offer or to speculate about how they might be able to assist with repairs.

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