Photos

Heavy rains bring down big rocks in Kanawha

Charleston Gazette photo by Chris Dorst  Herbert Hoover High school students (from left) Ian Avis, Ellie Kinder, Jessica Carpenter and Rebecca Sater make their way around a boulder to get home after school. The boulder fell onto Blue Creek Road after heavy rains Tuesday, creating a large hole and blocking the road for residents’ only way in or out.
Charleston Gazette photo by Chris Dorst
Herbert Hoover High school students (from left) Ian Avis, Ellie Kinder, Jessica Carpenter and Rebecca Sater make their way around a boulder to get home after school. The boulder fell onto Blue Creek Road after heavy rains Tuesday, creating a large hole and blocking the road for residents’ only way in or out.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Heavy rains and high water threatened roads and homes throughout the state on Tuesday, but emergency officials said the water had largely gone down by late afternoon.

The National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings — meaning flooding was imminent or had already been reported — for small creeks and streams in many parts of the state on Tuesday. A river flood warning was set to begin for the Coal River at Tornado beginning at 6:45 a.m. today.

Emergency officials in Kanawha County reactivated the county’s emergency operations center on Tuesday in case expected heavy rains create more flooding and landslides along Keystone Drive, where a massive landslide at Yeager Airport last month temporarily blocked Elk Two-Mile Creek and forced the evacuation of Keystone Drive.

“Given the flash flood forecast, we figured it was the prudent thing to do,” said Yeager Airport spokesman Mike Plante.

W.Va. 3 at Duval was closed by high water Tuesday morning, but later reopened, a Lincoln County emergency dispatcher said Tuesday morning.

Later in the day, Blue Creek Road was closed by a large rockslide, according to an announcement from the Pinch Volunteer Fire Department.

State Division of Highways spokeswoman Carrie Bly said one of the two rocks that blocked the road was about 18 feet tall, and the other was about 14 feet tall. Combined weight of the boulders was about 450 tons…

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