Thursday night’s flash flooding has washed out the first day of Herculaneum’s Dunklin Fletcher Days Fourth of July Festival.
Mayor Bill Haggard said Thursday’s (July 2) activities will not be held because the flooded Joachim Creek has closed the Austin-Hammond Memorial Bridge on Joachim Avenue over the creek just north of the festival site, Herculaneum City Park.
The highlight of the first night was the Herculaneum’s Got Talent show.
“It’s a shame because we really had good turnout for it,” Haggard said. “We had at least 12 acts signed up.”
The talent show has been rescheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday.
City Administrator Jim Kasten said the decision to call off Thursday’s events was an easy one.
“The field is just saturated,” he said. “We knew parking was going to be a problem anyway, but with the field the way it is, it would be impossible for everyone to set up and walk around there.”
The closing of the Joachim Avenue bridge means that two of the three bridges that allow north-south access through the city are closed.
The Commercial Boulevard (Hwy. 61-67) span has been closed for a couple of weeks, and traffic has – until Wednesday night – been diverted to Joachim Avenue.
Now, City Administrator Jim Kasten said, the only way to get through the city is the new bridge that links Riverview Drive behind the Buchheit store to School Street near the Doe Run Co.
“We’re hopeful the (Joachim Avenue) bridge will be open by July 4,” Kasten said. “It will depend on how fast the water goes down now. And once it’s down, the bridge will have to be inspected and cleaned.”
Kasten said police officers may be stationed at the approaches to the bridge because motorists have been avoiding the blockades and driving across it anyway.
"Can you believe that somebody wants to try to drive across that? I can't even begin to say how dangerous that is," he said.
Haggard said if the bridge isn’t reopened, it will play havoc with the festival, but as of now, the schedule will play out as planned for Friday night and all day Saturday.
“We had shuttles planned from the high school, but that’s out, because they can’t get over the bridge,” Haggard said. “The major thing that the bridge being out will affect is the parade (scheduled Saturday morning). If the bridge is still out, I’m not sure we’ll be able to do that.”
Kasten said the city itself wasn’t hit particularly hard by Wednesday’s flash flooding except for the rise of the Joachim Creek.
“The creek is up because of the flash flooding from De Soto and Festus, not from backwaters from the Mississippi River,” he said. “It’s my understanding the Mississippi River is actually down at St. Louis.”
Kasten said the only problem he’s heard about in town was at Amvets Post 42, which sits north of the Joachim Avenue bridge opposite the city park.
“They already had sandbags up, but when we got all that rain Wednesday night, they had to take some of the sandbags out to let some of the water out of the parking lot,” Kasten said. “Then the creek started rising, and they had to put the sandbags back in. Right now, they’ve got a pump getting the water out of the parking lot, but the building itself has not been inundated.”
Kasten said the city’s firefighters assisted their counterparts to the south with rescue efforts.