T-L/Photo GAGE VOTA Belmont County Board of Commissioners President Jerry Echemann, left, and Belmont County Emergency Management Agency Director Dave Ivan speak Friday about the flooding that affected Belmont County over the past week.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Belmont County Board of Commissions held an emergency meeting Friday to declare a state of emergency.

The board unanimously passed a motion to declare a state of emergency due to the recent extreme weather conditions in Belmont County. Heavy storms Monday through Wednesday brought more than 4 inches of rainfall to much of the county, leading to flash flooding followed by the flooding of the Ohio River on Thursday.

“This is not so much a FEMA situation as it is a flood cleanup effort that will be underway now,” Commission President Jerry Echemann said, noting that the declaration will help expedite the spending for the cleanup.

Belmont County Emergency Management Agency Director Dave Ivan spoke at the meeting.

“The whole process to this is to be able to put less restrictions on any type of purchasing of equipment we may need,” he said. “With this motion, we can eliminate all the paperwork and be able to go out and take care of our resources.”

According to Ivan the weather event that happened this week happened in almost all 88 counties in the state of Ohio.

“As far as we know right now, all of our roads are back open and all of the creeks are back into their streambeds,” Ivan noted.

While speaking about the current status of road conditions in Belmont County, Ivan said more wet weather is the last thing the area needs.

“It’s going to exacerbate the situation,” Ivan said regarding the impact of continued rainfall.

“When these extraordinary weather events take place we know you guys don’t get much sleep and we appreciate the effort and updates the EMA gives to us as events happen,” Commissioner J.P. Dutton told Ivan.

Dutton then asked Ivan about the weather stations being set up and how helpful they were in monitoring readings of the creeks.

“Oh boy, what a help it was!” Ivan said. “Based on what we’re seeing on the weather stations that we have, it’s like, ‘OK we just got 2 inches of rain, let’s go see what the creek is doing.’ Based on that we were able to say, ‘OK now we’re going to start seeing problems.'”

The EMA has rain gauges listed on its website that people in the community can see. The EMA also shares information on rainfall in the county with the National Weather Service, which Ivan said helps to determine when or if the National Weather Service issues any warnings.