PORTSMOUTH- Hurricane Helene swept through Scioto County Friday, September 27 and left damage in her wake. Trees fell all over the county, in parks, across power lines, and onto houses and vehicles. Roads suffered from the wear. Pockets of neighborhood were flooded. Wind ripped through properties. Scioto County Engineer Darren LeBrun commented on some of this damage Monday, after a few days of evaluation.

“We had a lot of rain that caught us by surprise,” LeBrun stated on Monday. “The most I saw predicted was one to two inches, but the tropical storm changed. We checked our rain gauge at the end of the storm, and we had 6.7 inches of rain in Lucasville. This morning, we checked it, and the total was 8.1 inches. Nothing like that had been forecasted. If that had been forecasted, we would have braced for it. We couldn’t have done much about it, but we could have braced ourselves better.”

LeBrun said that the recent dry days helped in some regard.

“It was really dry before this event hit and now we’re not. A lot of the county was hit differently, too,” LeBrun said. “We don’t have rain gauges throughout, but we know more rain hit on the eastern half of the county, verses the western, but we all had a lot of rain; it was quite the event.”

According to LeBrun, the County doesn’t yet have a number saying how bad the damage is.

“We don’t have a dollar total of damage in the county yet, but we were pretty lucky that we didn’t have any slides,” LeBrun said. “We had one slight slide with material on Slab Run, but we’re still running roads and checking. We’ve also had water over roadways and down trees. I’d say we had close to three dozen trees down along the county.”

Some of the trees take time to remove.

“The biggest issue with trees is that some have electric lines in them, and we have to wait for AEP because we can’t get into those,” LeBrun said.

LeBrun stated that there were at least four roads with trees still blocking traffic as of Monday and they were waiting for AEP to tend to them, due to powerlines. Overall, with things not being catastrophic in the county, they were thankful.

“Rosemount was under water on both sides of the hill. Some places had levels we hadn’t seen since 1997,” LeBrun claimed. “We didn’t have much on the west side, not like the east. We didn’t have anything catastrophic and we’re thankful for that. Portsmouth and New Boston seemed to be dealing with a lot more than what we were dealing with, as far as our roadways.”

LeBrun stated some of Scioto County was still without electric, but he had been in contact with AEP and they were working diligently on restoration of services. He asked that residents without power keep an eye on the AEP website for an estimated time of when power should be restored.

LeBrun is also keeping his eye on additional storms that could impact our area.

“I know that it exists, and I’ve looked at some details online. It is something to watch. We don’t have any drought conditions going on now, so anything we get now is to be watched closely,” LeBrun said. “We will be keeping our eye on it, especially with what we just saw before. We have the equipment and manpower, and it is going to give us what it does, but we will be prepared for it.”

While he claimed the area was hit hard, he is just thankful no lives were lost.

“I’ve seen photos of folks’ homes with water in them and your heart breaks for them. I’ve not heard of anyone passing away or anything, which is what matters, but it is still not normal to be kayaking down the city street,” LeBrun said. “Stuff can always be replaced. It isn’t always easy to replace it, but we’re just blessed to not be one of the stories like the Carolinas.”