texas

State Highway in Erath County Melting in the Texas Heat

State Highway 6 in Erath County should be a smooth commute. It was newly paved in November. But on Friday evening, it was slick with seeping tar and oil, and pitted like Swiss cheese where the road's surface had come up under the tires of commuters.

"It's a bad situation out here," said Bart Greenway, Erath County's justice of the peace. "Country roads are better than this."

Friday morning alone, there were three crashes along a 10-mile stretch of Highway 6 between Dublin and Hico.

"It gets slick as ice," explained Greenway. "We've had about 25 accidents on this road."

That's just in the past few weeks.

"Thankfully, no fatalities yet," said Greenway.

People who drive the stretch of highway said it started getting bad when the weather got warmer a few weeks ago.

"They did not do a good job," said Debora Voorhies, as she sat to dinner with her family at Granny Clark's Grill. "There's just holes everywhere in that road. It's horrible."

"Well, it used to not be so bad," said waitress Rhona Chew. "Until they 'fixed' it."

Friday afternoon, the Texas Department of Transportation had warning signs posted along the road and a crew was scraping up the melting roadway.

TxDOT released a statement to NBC 5 that said, in part, "TxDOT is both actively searching for the reason for the deterioration of the roadway and pursuing an emergency contract to permanently repair it."

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