“We dodged a bullet,” said Ironton Flood superintendent Mike Pemberton about the four days that dumped over five inches of rain on the area. It comes on the heels of 5.5 inches of rain in February and two inches of rain in March. This area normally gets about 11.6 inches of rain by this time, there has already been just under 16 inches.

Pemberton said they got really close to putting up the floodgates by Storms Creek on Second Street, but they didn’t because it causes huge traffic issues.

“We decided not to put up the gates because of all the construction on the north end and the school buses,” he said. “All the traffic would have to go across a train track with no gate.”

He said the Ohio River had crested in Parkersburg, West Virginia on Sunday and decided against putting up the gates. It takes about eight hours to put up the floodgate, which consists of dozens of wooden beams and requires the city to pull workers from several departments to assemble it.

“It’s primitive, but it works,” Pemberton said.

The rains did lead to many road closures over the weekend for flooding, road slides and mud slides including the Hanging Rock exit on U.S. 52.