The washed-out section of Rogers Road between Heritage Gates Drive and Hobblebush Way will reopen for traffic on Friday, Dec. 9, weather permitting, the North Carolina Department of Transportation has told the Town of Wake Forest. It has been closed since Oct. 8 when Hurricane Matthew came through.
Meanwhile crews from Blythe Construction continue to work on the Rogers Road bridge over Smith Creek, paving the new five-lane section on the bridge and up to the intersection with Heritage Lake Road and Forestville Road. Traffic is reduced to one lane each way through that area and caution is advised.
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Because there are no projects ready for consideration by the Wake Forest Planning Board, the meeting at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 6, has been cancelled. The Wake Forest Town Board, however, will hold its work session that night at 5:30 p.m.
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Local firefighters have returned from the North Carolina mountains where their efforts helped contain and fight the many fires there. Rain this week should help.
“All of our equipment and personnel are back,” Wake Forest Fire Department Chief Ron Early said this week. “We sent an engine, a brush truck and a van [for personnel use] and two different crews. The first crew of five members was there for six days and the second crew of five more replaced them and stayed for four days.” Several other fire departments in Wake County sent crews and equipment, including Stony Hill and Bay Leaf.
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Some great news from the turkey front. “We handed out 911 turkeys,” Detective Michael Sattler reported this week. Last year there was a new record of 800 turkeys donated and distributed through the Wake Forest Police Department’s Turkey Drive, but this year’s donations far exceeded those in earlier years. The entire community stepped up in the last days of the drive.
As for future years, Sattler said he would continue the drive. “I will do it every year I can for sure.”
Monetary donations bought about 700 turkeys from Walmart, people donated 200-plus turkeys Saturday, Nov. 19, and Living Word Family Church on Star Road donated 400 bags of groceries that were distributed along with the turkeys Monday morning, Nov. 21.
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Think you see more cars on the Wake Forest streets? You are, and the reason is we keep adding people. Charlie Yokley, the assistant director at the town’s planning department, said this week there are now about 39,012 people living here. “Wake Forest grows [at about 2,000 people [per year], which works out to about five people a day.” Drive carefully; a lot of your fellow drivers are just finding their way around town.
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You know about the drought and the wildfires in western North Carolina where the conditions from west to east are exceptional drought, extreme, severe and moderate, and then you come to a large swath in the middle of the state where conditions are listed as abnormally dry. All of Wake except for the area around Zebulon is abnormally dry. Hope for that promised rain later this week. You can see the conditions and lot about the state’s water at http://www.ncwater.org/Drought_Monitoring/
