Sinkholes made by heavy rains

Heavy rains in recent days have washed out ditch after ditch in Jackson County and, in at least one case, created a “sinkhole.”

On Sunday, rural Circleville resident Valerie Olberding was out mowing her yard when she discovered a rather large hole near an old bridge by her home that was created by heavy rains.

“It’s two or three feet one way by four or five feet the other way, and it goes about 10 feet down,” Olberding said Tuesday of the hole.

According to Jackson County Road and Bridge co-supervisor Eric Fritz, holes like the one found at Olberding’s residence are not rare occurrences after such heavy rains. That particular hole was filled in on Tuesday morning, Fritz said, but there is still a long way to go to repair some of the other road damage the county has sustained because of the rain.

“The rain came so hard and so fast that it ran over the top of the roads where the ditches weren’t deep enough to handle it,” Fritz said. “When you get two and a half inches in 30 minutes, there aren’t many ditches that can handle it.”

With a few rain-free days this week, Fritz said county road crews have been “getting on top of things” despite losing “a lot of road rock” due to the rain.

“We’ve got our hands full,” he said. “We’re still going to need about a week of good, solid sunshine to really get these roads back to where they were.”

For now, however, at least the hole in Olberding’s yard has been filled in.

“I was just glad I didn’t fall in it,” she said.