Feb. 1—Cullman County leaders continue to assess the lasting damage to rural roads left in the wake of a prolonged bout of icing and sub-freezing temperatures in January.

At a specially called meeting Monday, the Cullman County Commission ended the state of emergency it had called more than two weeks ago as the weather system approached north Alabama — though the need for repair work, said commissioner Jeff Clemons on Tuesday, is only beginning.

“The one thing we can’t control is Mother Nature, and we are going to have quite a bit of damage to some of our secondary roads from this event,” he said. “We have crews out now inspecting, and hopefully we will be in a position to apply for some federal EMA funding for repairs.”

In order for Cullman and other North Alabama counties to receive federal emergency funds, infrastructure damage must meet a maximum value not at the county level, but, as a whole, at the state level. Clemons said the dollar value in damage to Cullman County roads alone may go a long way toward helping the state’s ice-damaged counties exceed that threshold.

“I think throughout North Alabama, we should end up being in that qualifying category,” he said. “There was a lot of major icing in Walker, Morgan, Winston and other counties even beyond the ones that border Cullman.”

Perhaps the most visible of the storm’s road-related changes came along County Road 222 near its intersection with Interstate 65, where county road crews rushed to make quick repairs after a sinkhole opened underneath the roadway and temporarily narrowed the flow of traffic to one lane. “We think that sinkhole will end up having something to do with the freeze and subsequent thaw,” said Clemons.

“The repairs on that could end up being half a million dollars or more. We had one lane blocked off while we worked on it over the weekend and it’s open again now — but we still think that we’re going to have to do some major lasting repairs that may end up including a water line that runs underneath the road.”

Clemons noted that much of the emergency-qualifying road damage appears to have come along well-traveled county thoroughfares like CR 222. “It looks like some really high- traffic roads are going to have some damage,” he said. “There’s damage on 1169, a road that we paved just last year. We have damage on 946. We’re still inspecting everything, but I believe Cullman and the rest of north Alabama will have enough road damage to qualify for federal emergency funds — which at this point, I think we’re all going to need.”

Benjamin Bullard can be reached by phone at 256-734-2131 ext. 234.