Farmers recover after heavy damage from rainfall

FREMONT COUNTY, Idaho (KIFI) - Saturday brought rain to farmers in Fremont County; however, the storm brought anywhere from 2"-3.25" of rain to the Ashton area in one hour. The large amount of rain in a short amount of time led to flash flooding in the area.

The flooding led to damage on roads all throughout Fremont County.

"Damage to county roads has been limited. Many roads were overtopped but were not damaged. Private roads, especially those with any type of slope received the most damage, especially those with graveled surfaces," Emergency Management Coordinator for Fremont County Keith Richey said in a recent news release.

While the roads seemed to have made it out of the storm alright, the bulk of the damage was to farmer's fields. Fields that are recently cut before the storm have been deemed as a total loss. Some farm buildings have also been affected by the flash flooding.

"But out of the storm for damage to residences and businesses was actually very low, which we're very grateful for," Richey said.

Richey says to total amount of the damage from the flooding is "the farmers, I know quite a few of them are still waiting to find out whether their insurance for the crops will cover that. But we have thousands of acres of crop that have been destroyed. We have some fields that are just completely destroyed and others kind of a hit and miss. So it's been kind of hard to track to see exactly where all the damage was at."

He says despite the recent damage and cost to the local farmers they are all hopeful for a quick and speedy recovery.

"They're hopeful. Like I say, there's a couple of fields that it's a total loss. But some of the fields, you know, looking at sometimes just 10% loss from what we can estimate. So most of the farmers seem to have the insurance. Just a question of whether it's going to be covered by this. Hail is usually covered from now."

He says there's no easy way to prepare and prevent flash flooding like we saw Saturday but everyone will be ok.

"But around homes that we had affected, it was just a matter of laying down some tarps around. They had thought ahead and that kept the water from going in."