CANDLER COUNTY, Ga. () – After weekend storms, many roads are still washed out or impassable in rural parts of the Coastal Empire, like Bulloch, Tattnall and Candler counties.

visited Candler County Monday and found several dirt roads flooded with ankle-deep water as well as significant infrastructure damage in some areas.

“It’s insane,” Candler County resident Matt Brown said. “It has a resemblance of Hurricane Helene that came through. Some of the damages to the ponds, the roads, and the bridges, all that. It’s certainly been close to that. Maybe not as bad, but in this particular pocket it’s been probably as bad if not worse.”
When asked about the flooding Candler County Sheriff John Miles said, “We’ve seen between five and ten inches of rain, and what that did was impact a lot of our county roads. We had some roads that were just muddy, and we had some roads that were almost completely washed out.”

Some of the most severe flooding was in Metter on Oak Tree and Wagon Wheel Roads.

However, in Claxton, Hillview Road had even larger problems than flooding.

The road was split in two.

“The bridge around the corner got taken out yesterday,” Brown said. “The hurricane blew it out, and it just got fixed like three weeks ago. It blew it right back out.”

The aftereffects of the weekend rainfall also caused at least one incident on the roads, according to police.

“A vehicle was traveling in an area where they shouldn’t have been,” Miles said. “They ran into the flood waters on the dirt road that washed out. That person was also DUI, which was also a very bad combination.”

With the conditions still hazardous, residents are advised to be cautious and use their best judgement to avoid dangerous situations.

“We were checking on some other property that we have over here, and it was completely flooded over the top. We couldn’t even access it, ” Brown said. “It’s a little unnerving for sure.”