MEXICO — State transportation crews were busy repairing roadsides Thursday morning in Mexico and Rumford after Wednesday afternoon’s downpour caused flash flooding.
Heavy rain hit Mexico and Rumford very hard and a stretch in Franklin County, but damage was limited to the River Valley area, Norm Haggan, regional manager of the Maine Department of Transportation in Dixfield, said Thursday morning.
“It hit hard, and there’s more coming tonight,” Haggan said.
Late Thursday morning, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch via its Facebook site through 8 p.m. Friday.
The flood watch also had a rainfall map, revealing more than two inches of rain is anticipated to fall across a wide swath of western and southern Maine. Outside of that area, more than an inch is expected.
Additional damage from Wednesday’s storm in Mexico included a long washout along the dirt Lapointe Road, down to its intersection with Back Kingdom Road.
A Mexico Highway Department employee who declined to be identified said the flash flooding plugged a culvert in the woods that took out the Lapointe Road section. That debris then swept downhill and plugged another culvert under Back Kingdom Road, which was paved last year, he said.
The flood overran Back Kingdom Road and took out the backside of it, exposing the buried guardrail base. A crew had trucked in dirt and gravel and piled it along Lapointe Road to grade it into place, but the town employee said he didn’t think a crew would repair the Back Kingdom Road damage until next week.
Butch McKenna, the treasurer and chairman of the Oakdale Country Club Golf Course clubhouse, said the golf course appeared to be “ground zero” for the downpour.
“We had washouts on No. 6 fairway and No. 11 and No. 7 fairways, and we lost 12 feet of the practice area,” McKenna said. “At No. 4 fairway, we lost a culvert, which was why it was so bad down below (on Highland Terrace and Route 2), and No. 3 and No. 5 fairways were full of mud.”
He said 15 club members volunteered to help clean up the course on Thursday and finished by 1:30 p.m. The country club also lost golf cart roads going to the clubhouse and the No. 7 cart path due to flash flooding.
“It was a lot of cleanup, and we were advised this morning that we have no insurance,” McKenna said.
In some places in Rumford and Mexico, Haggan said part of the pavement on state roads was undermined and carried away.
“There were washouts on Wyman Hill Road in Rumford and Highland Terrace in Mexico,” Haggan said. “It hit hard from Phillips to Kingfield, but it didn’t do any damage up there.”
He said two to three inches of rain fell in a short time on mountains in the Phillips and Kingfield area but he didn’t know how much fell in the Rumford-Mexico area.
“And that’s the way it came across, how it looked on the radar yesterday,” Haggan said. “There was one spot, yellow and orange (heavy rain), and it just stayed in one block.”
He said state crews were working along Wyman Hill Road on Thursday morning, adding gravel and grading it flat along both shoulders. The crew would then do the same along Highland Terrace on Thursday afternoon.
“We probably lost at least 100 yards of gravel in both places put together,” Haggan said. “I can honestly say the drought is over.”
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- A Maine Department of Transportation crew marked this washout along Highland Terrace Road with safety cones to alert drivers prior to hauling gravel in on Thursday afternoon and grading it flat. It was one of several washouts along the road following flash flooding from Wednesday afternoon’s downpour.
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- This section of Mexico’s Back Kingdom Road toward the end of the road was undermined after two culverts were plugged with debris from Wednesday afternoon’s downpour and flash flooding that also washed away a large stretch of the shoulder along Lapointe Road.
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- A driveway near the Lapointe Road intersection on Back Kingdom Road in Mexico had yet to be filled in with gravel on Thursday morning. Wednesday afternoon’s downpour caused flash flooding that plugged two culverts and washed across both roads and down this driveway.
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