Recent storms which bombarded Hamilton County with twice the normal amount of rainfall have played havoc with houses and roads on the side of Signal Mountain, leaving officials scrambling to figure out ways to contain and eventually repair the damages.
Particularly hard hit was Sunset Drive, about halfway up the front of the mountain, which is outside town limits but does receive its water from Signal.
Officials said a huge crack opened there early this month, followed a few days later by a landslide that damaged the street and some water lines.
The foundations of about a half dozen houses along Sunset reportedly also were affected.
To date, occupants of two of the homes have been ordered to evacuate those properties because they currently are “unsafe for human habitation,” according to emergency orders from both Hamilton County Building Inspection and Hamilton County Fire Marshal.
The first of the two evacuation orders was issued on Feb. 13; the second was dated Feb. 18 following an inspection the day before.
According to meteorologist Doug Schneider of the National Weather Service in Morristown, a little more than 16 inches of rainfall fell at the Chattanooga Airport between Jan. 1 and Feb. 19.
“That’s not counting what fell today,” he said late Thursday afternoon.
According to records for the past 30 years, he said, the normal amount of rainfall for that time period is 8.16 inches.
Approximately the same amount of rain would have fallen on Signal Mountain, he noted, and “we certainly hear a lot of reports of mudslides when that happens.”
In addition to the damage on Sunset Drive on the front of the mountain, heavy runoff has caused wide cracks and significant dips on the W Road – which runs up the side of Signal from Mountain Creek Road to the town of Walden.
“It’s like riding a roller coaster,” one woman joked while shopping at Pruett’s.
County officials, who also are responsible for the maintenance of the W, have stayed busy putting temporary fill in the cracks to minimize damage while they wait for the heavy rainfalls to end and saturated grounds to dry out.
Signal Mountain town manager Boyd Veal, who met Thursday morning with a variety of officials regarding the situation on Sunset Drive, updated council members later in the day.
“We again have a water line issue down on Sunset,” Mr. Veal wrote. “These issues are separations of (water line) pipe due to the movement of the ground. They are not breaks or ruptures.
“I just completed a meeting with multiple county agencies,” he concluded. “Their road and our water line are being damaged, not causing damage.”