Mayor: 2 dead, 17 unaccounted for in Washington County, Tenn.

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Washington County, Tennessee Mayor Joe Grandy confirmed to News Channel 11 Monday evening that two people have died and 17 are unaccounted for in the county following Friday’s flooding.

The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) listed 62 people as “missing” in Washington County early Sunday morning. Grandy said on Monday that number was 17.

According to Grandy, two people have been confirmed dead, and their identities were not released.

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At a press conference on Monday, Kory Green TEMA’s incident management team PIO said teams were still out assessing damage.

After assessing the damage, TEMA will put an orange “X “on that area.

Green asks people not to move debris or clean up damaged property until search and rescue has looked at that area.

“Once they clear you, and put an X on it, then you can start cleaning up your property,” Green said. “And that’s just so that way, we make sure that we don’t leave anything unturned or have any problems going in the future.”

Green also said TEMA will help anyone clean up their property for free.

Kevin Brobeck, Jonesborough Water Distribution Director, said 7,600 customers were without water on Monday.

He said 7,000 should have water back on by early Tuesday morning. However, 600 will still be without water because of infrastructure damage.

Those are the areas located south of the Nolichucky River including Highway 107, all connecting roads on Highway 107 and 81 south from Taylor Bridge heading towards Erwin including Bumpus Cove and Little Germany.

“There is quite a bit of infrastructure damage and when I say total damage, I mean total damage,” Brobeck said. “Lines are washed out of the ground. So there’s going to have to be some construction and things to be done over there, before we can get water back to that area. But we are going to start on that immediately. We’ve already started basically on the planning and assessing the damage and the planning of where to go next.”

As of Monday evening, BrightRidge reported about 1,839 outages remaining south of the Nolichucky River and another 335 outages in the remainder of the four-county service area.

“All of our crews are working as hard as humanly possible to push new power lines across the river,” Dykes said. “Once we can get that done, we can begin looking to restore distribution lines on the southern side of the river where possible.”

BrightRidge said electric construction crews were completing final work late Monday on support structures necessary to allow sag in longer conductor lines needed to cross the flood-widened river channel at Bailey Bridge in the southern part of the county.

The Washington County Sheriff’s Office announced on Monday that the Jackson Bridge will be closed to thru traffic starting at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday for “a few hours.” The closure is to allow for electrical work along the Nolichucky River.

Drivers are asked to use Arnold Road and Snapp Bridge as alternate ways of accessing Highway 107.

Mayor Grandy said four out of the seven bridges crossing the Nolichucky River were washed out. Those include Taylor Bridge, Bailey Bridge, Corby Bridge and the Highway 107 bridge.

He also listed several roads in the county that are still closed. Road closures include Pendleton Smith, Frank Stanton, Bill Mark, Little Germany, AJ Willis, Charlie Carson and H. Coggins.

Mayor Grandy also thanked all first responders and volunteers for their efforts.

“It’s an amazing place to live where we live,” Grandy said. “The things that we’ve seen over the last few days are absolutely astounding as to what people just step up and do many times were not even being asked to do that.”

The Washington County Commission also held an emergency meeting on Monday night.
Emergency officials, including the EMA director and EMS chief, shared about their relief efforts.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will assist in Washington County starting Tuesday morning.

Mayor Grandy told News Channel 11 he is working on financial projections to request disaster relief funding.

You can text washingtoncounty38276 to receive updates or by checking the county’s website.

Green said flyers have been handed out and posted in parts of the county that are suffering from bad cell phone reception.

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