NewsWest 9
PERMIAN BASIN - Melting winter snow brings with it potholes popping up everywhere in the Permian Basin. That has West Texas drivers dodging during their commutes.
"I avoid them. I go around them," Odessa driver, Amanda Gates, said.
"It seems like they get deeper by the day," Odessa Driver, Sergio Mendoza, said.
Drivers don't want their tires sinking down into these potholes for fear of what it could do to their cars.
Often they can never tell when one's coming up until it's too late.
"There's quite a few," another driver said.
"I just think it's a real inconvenience for a lot of drivers, especially if you have a car, not a truck. It just bounces your car everywhere," Mendoza said. "It just makes me wonder can't we fix the roads?"
That's another question drivers want answered: What is being done to fix the potholes?
"I live in a trailer court and they keep on patching them and all they're doing is patching them. They're not actually fixing them. They need to be fixed," Gates said.
Ector County traffic officials told NewsWest 9 they've been trying to fix them. They've been dealing with potholes everywhere since the snow that hit the area on Christmas Eve.
The county only has two patch trucks that go around and fill the holes with asphalt patches.
But they also have to wait until the water's evaporated out of the holes or the patch won't stick.
They're asking for caution and patience from drivers while they try to fix this pothole breakout that nature piles onto our streets.
"I've seen a lot of them being filled but then a lot of them not, so maybe they just haven't gotten to them yet," another driver said.
NewsWest 9 asked a local Discount Tire in Odessa how many pothole damage cases they're seeing. They told us they see multiple cases every day.
In some cases, both front tires or both back tires were damaged at the same time by potholes.
