Avoiding Flooded Areas While Driving

Big storms and heavy rain make things difficult on law enforcement, especially when they have to help drivers figure out how to get around flooded areas. State Patrol Inspector Scott Linek points out that it could also take a while to help every person get to where they need to go.

Linek says “you have to give them instructions because you really have only one route they can go or else they’re going to end up down a flooded road and get stuck. Sometimes you’ve got ten cars in line but you have to give each of them instructions for their route – individually sometimes – tell them to ‘follow that truck, he’s going the same way you’re going’ – to get them around the flooded roads because you have one road that’s open.”

Linek adds that it’s hard to tell, “especially in the evening or when it’s dark out, which road is passable, which one is not. Which one has just a little bit of water over it that’s completely safe – what road is two, three, four feet underwater, which you should never be driving a car under.”

Keeping track of which roads are open is not always easy. Linek points out that “you have roads closed, but now people want to know which road is
open and passable  – and that changes
quickly. You may think a road is open and a river floods or an area gets
inundated with water and now it washes out another road or floods another road.
So, half the battle is finding roads that are open, because then people just
get stranded or stuck.”