Traffic lights and debris pick-up were two topics that Columbia County commissioners received an update on during committee meetings on Tuesday, Oct. 23.
Traffic in Columbia County
District 4 Commissioner Alison Couch asked about the amount of traffic in Columbia County lately and why it seems to be bad right now. Kyle Titus, engineering services division director, said that when Hurricane Helene hit, all 83 traffic signals went down. Within a week, all but two were up and running. The two that weren’t had to be completely reconstructed, he said.
“Still with all the signals up and running, the primary device that activates green, red and yellow signal timing is the detection,” Titus said. “So, you have two types of detection. You have one physical detection in the road, and the other is the camera detection, which observes and counts vehicles. All the cameras were shifted, thrown off (or) broken.”
MORE: Columbia County Board of Commissioners discuss Hurricane Helene
Titus said that even though the signals are operational, they aren’t detecting vehicles properly, so the county staff is having to go in and redraw the detection zones.
“Since they work in corridors, the corridors aren’t talking to each other appropriately yet,” Titus said. “So, we’re going through each signal based on volume…that’s where we’re starting and moving down the corridor. It’ll take a while…we’re working really hard to get the signals back in line and all the detection corrected so we can be up and running. Staff is estimating it’ll be a few more weeks, but we’re confident we’ll have everything up and running back to pre-hurricane conditions prior to Thanksgiving.”
Debris cleanup
As for debris cleanup, Deputy County Manager Matt Schlachter said it was continuing and as of Monday, that approximately 325,000 yards of debris had been picked up. The county is working on creating a better map to plot zones around debris sites.
“We’re working with GIS to determine drive time areas, so we’re working on that to give to the truck drivers to make their process more efficient,” Titus said.
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County Manager Scott Johnson said EMA Director Shawn Granato met with the cities of Harlem and Grovetown on Monday to get the paperwork done regarding the cleanup and to ensure additional trucks are brought in to help there.
“By the end of this week, we should be picking up both cities with some additional trucks,” Johnson said.
County parks update
Couch also asked for an update on the state of the county’s parks. Community Services Director John Luton said most of the parks have reopened and are operational. In fact, athletic games started back last week. While staff is clearing smaller debris, they are waiting on assistance for larger items.
“We’re working with Mr. Titus’ team and Ceres for the large cleanup,” Luton said. “So, we’ve provided them with a detailed list and a prioritized list of our parks, which ones we would like them to try and hit first. So that’s in their hands now. We are continuing to move forward and making good progress on that.”
Fire Chief Jeremy Wallen told commissioners that from Friday, Sept. 27 when Hurricane Helene hit, to Friday, Oct. 4, fire rescue responded to 572 calls. He added that was almost a month’s worth of calls in a six-day period.
