PERRYSBURG – Conditions appear to be improving after ice jams and high water caused some havoc along the
Maumee River this weekend.
"Things seemed to go fairly well this year," said Wood County Emergency Management Director
Brad Gilbert this morning. "Obviously, quite a bit of ice, especially on the Maumee River."

Gilbert said the ice began to let loose in the Grand Rapids area late Friday afternoon, in a similar
fashion to previous years.
However, once the ice got downriver, it "obviously piled up toward Perrysburg and Maumee, which we
haven’t seen it do that in a while. The big cause of that is the lake is still iced over, so it really
didn’t have anywhere to go."
Gilbert said that the ice took out trees along the banks, and some river access points in the area had to
be closed. Additionally, some properties along the Wood County portion of the river were impacted, said
Gilbert, but not as badly as on the Lucas County side – owing to the fact that the Wood County banks are
higher.
However, he said conditions on the river are getting better overall, despite a number of fields that have
also flooded in the county and are in need of drainage.
The Maumee/Perrysburg area saw a number of incidents along the river in recent days. Two river rescues
were undertaken on the Perrysburg side on Saturday afternoon involving four people, including one man
who was rescued from a tree after the canoe he was using to check on conditions at a horse farm
capsized.
A video circulating on Facebook showed that Riverside Cemetery in Maumee had experienced an ice flow so
massive it knocked over and displaced a large number of tombstones. In some places along the Wood County
side, ice jams as high as 30 feet were reported to the Sentinel-Tribune.
Jeff Baney, assistant director of the Wood County Park District, said Monday that the Buttonwood Park
area near Perrysburg is essentially "an ice field at this point so we can’t have access to
it," and said there seems to have been "significant damage" to some park amenities.
Perrysburg Fire Chief Jeff Klein also said that conditions appear to be improving, but noted "we’ve
got limited access to do rescues, to get our boat in," due to the ice issues. He said that the
Perrysburg Street Division was to work on the problem today.
"I think everyone on the river’s got the same issues," Klein said.
Gilbert said a comparatively small issue took place on the Portage River, at Pemberville, Thursday night,
with an ice jam that caused the river to rise about three feet "which isn’t too bad for the
Portage," he said. "The water went down immediately after the jam let loose."