Creekside Drive hole damaging cars in front of auto shop
The hole on Creekside Drive causing numerous issues for motorists.
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- A very large pothole on Creekside Drive off of Amnicola Highway is leaving drivers and business owners frustrated.
Tiffany Rankins had dropped off her vehicle at Quick Everett’s Garage for some work to be done to the car.
Her mother, Vannice Hughley, came to pick her up in her Cadillac.
That’s when they met a giant hole on Creekside Drive.
Rankins recalled, “We hit something that was beyond a pothole.”
Hughley added, “Like a gully.”
“Yeah, we were tumbling around in the car. It knocked down our undercarriage.” Rankins then showed us the torn off remains of her mother’s undercarriage.
Perry Freeman has been an owner of Quick Everett’s Garage since 2018 who has been dealing with the hole for years.
He said, “It’s gotten big enough to where even your standard cars are hitting their oil pans, busting tires, even at 5 to 10 miles per hour.”
Freeman says it’s frustrating to see cars his crew has worked on sustaining unneeded damage coming in and out of his business.
He added, “The only thing that happens is about once a year the pothole patrol comes out, and they throw loose asphalt in it, and the problem is by the end of the day, the trucks have washed it out into the water areas, the water drainage, so by the next time it rains there’s a lake right in front of the business there.”
We did see some Chattanooga Department of Transportation inspectors assessing the hole Friday morning.
In a statement to us, a C-DOT spokesperson told us quote:
“We had our paving managers out inspecting Creekside Drive today. The subsurface is suffering from a failure that we believe resulted from tractor-trailers traversing the asphalt before it fully set when repaved in 2013. Although it wasn’t visible to the naked eye at the time, cracks that were created then resulted in water leaking into the roadbed, freezing in the winter, and breaking down the subsurface. The failures are occurring directly in front of the United Packers driveway on the northbound side, and where trucks make sweeping turns into the same driveway going southbound. We’re hoping to address the issues with a more permanent solution in the fiscal year that beings in July.”
However, it will currently be a hefty repair bill for Vannice Hughley.
Vannice Hughley asked, “The mayor ran on fixing the streets, fixing these potholes. He ain’t got around to it you think? Or did he run out of asphalt?.. Being a senior citizen on a fixed income , I can’t afford this. I can’t afford this. I had to have a tire plug because of that gully!”
