Several inches of rain caused major travel problems around Western New York and the Finger Lakes Monday. Even though most of the rain has moved on, it will take a while to complete the cleanup.
Some of the heaviest rain and the worse damage in our area was in Ontario County, in the Town of Richmond. The town supervisor there, Ralph Angelo remembers a really bad storm that impacted that area in 1971, and he says this one was worse. Angelo figures about six inches of rain fell, washing out sections of roads and culverts. He says it will be a while before they can repair all the damage.
"We'll probably have to hire some contractors, help from the other towns, it'll probably be a team effort to clean it up.” The Town of Richmond also declared a state of emergency.
Sections of roads were also reported washed away in other communities, including in Avon in Livingston County.
David LeFeber is the supervisor of the Town of Avon, and they had a section of at least one road washed away.
"We've got some other erosion on roadsides, so we might get the roads open here in a few days but it's going to be a couple of weeks to really clean up and handle some of these smaller erosion…problems."
A number of area counties, including Monroe, Ontario and Livingston also issued travel advisories during the day because of messy weather.
In Monroe County, the areas most affected included Riga, Wheatland and parts of Chili. There were also hundreds of R G and E and NYSEG customers left without power at times, partly due to downed power lines.
