A Hancock County man is lucky to be alive because his vehicle didn’t fall into the washout of a drainage feature on Old Kiln Road Saturday night.
Michael Laptas was out at the scene of the accident Sunday afternoon taking pictures for insurance purposes and shared his story with the Item. He said the road washed out as he was driving home on Old Kiln Road at about 11 p.m. Saturday. Just as his vehicle crossed a culvert in-between the intersections of N. Benville Street and Katie Drive in northern Hancock County, a section of the road gave way.
His vehicle made it across, but as the road fell beneath the vehicle its transmission was sheared from the bottom and the airbags deployed, Laptas said. He pointed out an area a short distance from the washout where the vehicle came to rest and left a stain of transmission fluid.
He and his passenger suffered only minor injuries.
The washout started small as his vehicle crossed, but about an hour later when he was concluding his account of what happened to local law enforcement, he said the rest of the road washed out.
“That was our excitement for the night,” Laptas said.
Later Sunday afternoon another section of road collapsed along Old Kiln Road along with a small section of asphalt on Herschel Mitchell Road, both in Pearl River County, said Supervisor J. Patrick Lee.
Lee said he was surveying the area when he saw several cars cross the bridge and witnessed the asphalt collapse.
“I’m very thankful nobody was hurt,” Lee said.

Now those areas are also closed. Lee said a problem was also noted at Dupont Hart’s Chapel Road.
Work to fix the hole on Herschel Mitchell Road should be done in a few days, but the washout at the bridge is another story, Lee said.
Due to the need to draw up plans that would entail increasing the span of the bridge to allow more water to flow underneath, and the need for a bid process to find a contractor to do the work, Lee estimates it might be two months before that problem can be fixed.
Attempts by the Item to contact the Hancock County Road Department on Monday for a timeline on repairing the major washout in their area were unsuccessful by press time.