Floodwaters pushed the South Fork Licking River toward a record crest early Friday, prompting the Village of Buckeye Lake to order mandatory evacuations for everyone living west of the State Route 79 and State Route 360 intersection. The National Weather Service in Wilmington forecast the river to hit 883.50 feet by Friday morning, a level that would surpass the previous record of 882.9 feet set in March 2020. Flood stage at that location is 880.0 feet, meaning the river is expected to run more than three and a half feet above the threshold that triggers flooding.
Village officials first issued a voluntary evacuation order at 6 p.m. Thursday before escalating it to mandatory status just two hours later, according to Columbus Navigator. The order, enacted for up to 24 hours, covers low-lying residential developments including Buckeye Lake Estates and nearby campgrounds as rapidly rising water from the South Fork Licking River threatened homes along the channel. As reported by The Columbus Dispatch, overnight rains caused massive flooding throughout Central Ohio, setting the stage for the river's push toward a record height near Buckeye Lake.
Shelters Open as Families Flee Rising Water
Local authorities established an emergency evacuation shelter at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church on Walnut Road SE in Buckeye Lake, with additional shelters opened across the county in Pataskala, Heath, and Hebron, per the Scioto Post's report. Relief operations and transportation assistance for displaced residents were coordinated through the Licking County Emergency Management Agency, local officials, and the American Red Cross. Residents leaving the evacuation zone were urged to shut off gas and electric utilities if it was safe to do so, the same report notes.
Earlier in the week, standing floodwaters had already been reported along North Bank Road and Sellers Point, well before the mandatory order went into effect. The National Weather Service identified Buckeye Lake Estates and the local KOA campground as commercial and residential sites facing the worst structural water damage as the river channel continued to swell.
Interstate 70 Submerged Near Exit 129
The flooding has not stayed confined to village streets. Once the South Fork Licking River hit 883.0 feet, both the eastbound and westbound lanes of Interstate 70 near Exit 129 went under more than a foot of water, forcing closures and detours between Exit 122 and Exit 126. Water typically begins spilling onto the Exit 129A off-ramp once the river reaches its 880.0-foot flood stage, a threshold it blew well past this week.
The storm system that moved through Central Ohio on August 19 and 20 dropped 4 to 7 inches of rain across the hardest-hit parts of Licking and Franklin counties, overwhelming storm drains and small tributaries across the region. Local officials noted that parts of the watershed had absorbed up to 18 inches of cumulative rainfall over the nine days leading up to the crest, a compounding factor that left the ground and river channels with little capacity left to handle the latest downpour.
Officials Say Dam Is Working as Designed
Amid the flooding, Licking County officials moved to clarify that the trouble stems from the river itself, not the lake's dam. County officials stated that the Buckeye Lake dam was functioning properly during the event, with the SR 79 spillway operating automatically based on lake pressure. A secondary SR 360 overflow spillway is designed to automatically discharge water once the lake rises 8 inches above summer pool, and lake drains are otherwise kept closed during summer months, only opened manually for the annual fall drawdown.
That reassurance carries weight given the dam's history. In 2018, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources completed a $107 million, three-year replacement of Buckeye Lake's 4.1-mile earthen dam, a project launched after a 2015 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assessment declared the 180-year-old original structure unsafe and a high-hazard risk to thousands of downstream homes, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. Engineers built a 30-foot-wide stability berm and a 42-foot-deep soil-mix cutoff wall as part of that overhaul to prevent a collapse.
A Record Set Just Six Years Earlier
This week's forecast crest would eclipse a flood that Central Ohio residents may still remember well. In March 2020, extreme spring rainfall pushed the South Fork Licking River to a then-record crest of 882.9 feet near Buckeye Lake, an event that shut down Interstate 70 lanes and required swift-water rescues across Licking and Franklin counties, according to FloodList. That 2020 storm also broke a daily rainfall record in Columbus that had stood since 1984.
The lake's vulnerability to this kind of complex flooding traces back to its origins. Buckeye Lake was created between 1825 and 1830 as a canal feeder reservoir for the Ohio and Erie Canal, built by damming a four-mile earthen dike across the South Fork Licking River basin. The reservoir still relies on a nine-mile Feeder Channel near Kirkersville to divert river water and maintain pool levels, a dual system that leaves southern Licking and northern Fairfield counties uniquely exposed to watershed flooding whenever heavy rain hits the region.
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