Fortunately, flooding has not been an issue locally as a result of the recent storm, but road crews are concerned about another possible problem brought on by all of the rain: land- and rockslides.

Road officials in Jefferson County said they are checking trouble spots to hopefully prepare for any problems before they happen.

"The crews are out checking the routes for fallen trees, plugged drains and also rockslides," said John Petrisko of the Ohio Department of Transportation in Jefferson County.

As of Tuesday afternoon, only a minor spot was affected by falling debris from a Jefferson County hillside.

"We did have a couple fall on State Route 213 just south of the rest area. The crews just pick them up and move them off the road," Petrisko said.

He said that's a relief for road crews in a county already dealing with two major closures on State Route 7 because of land- and rockslides.


"Hopefully Route 7 will be in good shape as far as the areas that are already taken care of. Now, (a) new slide could occur anywhere down through there; we just hope that it doesn't," he said.


He said a warm-up and rain can cause problems.

"We get more rockslides in the spring because of that. Our concern this time would be the amount of rain that we had with just washing some debris off of those sides," Petrisko said.

"If it's a larger rockslide … you can use a snowplow to plow it off. We will – if it's bigger than that – we'll have to shut down a lane. And this area has experienced that over the last couple of years with the lane closures and even road closures. So we have to watch the severity of it and play it by ear."


Road officials now can only hope there won't be any more closures added to the two on Route 7 in the southern part of the county.

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