Del. officials eye road conditions following storm flood

in the clear — including in delaware — where several roads have been closed off today from high waters and damages. as 47 a-b-c’s lili zheng reports — there’s still work to be done even with clearer skies. track 1 barricaded roadways — and scattered tree limbs. that’s the aftermath of some parts in sussex county on friday — after heavy winds and rain in the days prior. it’s going to be…a long while until we get out of this track 2 del-dot spokesperson jim westhoff — says about 300 crew members statewide spent the day cleaning up roads. more than 100 — in sussex county alone. according to westhoff — the southern portion of the county saw the worst of damages. this includes part of indian mission and beaver dam roads on route 5 between lewes and georgetown — which was closed friday. westhoff says road crews and inspectors can start accessing damage as soon as debris is cleared, but that can’t start until water recedes and that can take awhile track 3 doug brown has lived in lewes for ten years. and he says — he’s never seen route 5 in this condition. the road closure did not impact his friday commute — but he says he made sure to avoid it thursday when the rain was coming down. we came down here and we turned around when it was really rushing over this over the roadway. few people went through it, but i just didn’t want to chance it track 4 westhoff says — deldot will continue monitoring weather conditions and roadways over the weekend. 13:19:01 especially down in the indian inlet river bridge area, our concern is the tides because the back bay has been flooding onto the road at high tide so we’re watching every high tide cycle 10 track 5 as for brown — he says road closures don’t bother him. 13:31:49 in the short term, it’s an inconvenience but in the long run, you’re better off 53 track 6 lili zheng, 47 a-b-c fortunately — del-dot says there were not many road collapses as a result of the storm. we’re told the only one reported was on indian mission and beaver dam roads. the collapse was caused by erosion from the flood. water washed over the road — scooping out soil underneath of it. ultimately — there was nothing underneath that portion of the road — causing it to collapse. our engineers will come here and they’ll take a look and see what we can do. we’ll probably have to rebuild that which was scooped away and maybe take a look at what caused the problem in the first place and maybe we can minimize it happening again again — del-dot says it’s unclear exactly how long it will take to fix road damages. but — they say road closures are possible this weekend — if need be. moving to maryland – where highway and public works