LYNCHBURG, Ohio — In June 2022, an electrical fire shut down a Highland County village's only post office. More than one year later, mail services have partially resumed, but the building remains closed.
Some residents say they're now past the point of frustration, as the post office was originally supposed to reopen last winter.
"The old folks who live across the street complain about it almost every day," said Miles Pac, who works at the Marathon gas station down the street.
Pac said he moved to Lynchburg six months before the fire broke out. He was watching from the gas station as fire crews rushed to douse the flames.
"Hours later they finally got it put out," he said. "And we realized the whole town was probably going to have to go without (a post office)."
But Pac didn't realize he'd have to wait more than half a year to see a USPS truck make another delivery.
Because Lynchburg has never had door-to-door delivery, each resident has a designated P.O. box, but for roughly six months after mail service was suspended in the village, residents had to make the 40-minute round trip drive every day to the county seat of Hillsboro to send or receive their mail.
Lynchburg Mayor James Burton spoke with WCPO last October. Burton said his village was supposed to get a modular mail unit to temporarily resume delivery services until the fire-damaged post office was repaired. That should have been in July.
"[When] I called again and they [said] Aug. 12 they’ll have something for you, and then it was Sept. 12," Burton said last October.
In the months following the fire, Representative Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) had been monitoring USPS's timeline. Still without an answer as to when the modular unit would be built, Wenstrup penned a letter to USPS on Oct. 17, 2022.
"Currently, local residents have been without normal service following a fire at the United States Post Office in Lynchburg on June 16, 2022, which closed the branch indefinitely. Residents must now drive to Hillsboro to retrieve their mail, an inconvenience that requires some residents to drive up to 20 miles to pick up their mail," the letter read. "As we approach the winter months, citizen safety is of paramount concern given the required drive for some constituents to retrieve their mail. The Lynchburg community is a rural community where roads can be especially hazardous during inclement winter weather. This will be especially challenging for senior citizens, many who depend on USPS for delivery of their life-saving medications."
It wasn't until a month later in November when ground broke a few feet away from the original building for the modular site and it wasn't until January that the metal building opened its doors.
"It hasn't really improved," Pac said.
The small unit houses P.O. boxes, so residents can now receive mail, but other than sending off small envelopes in a drop box, they can't ship off anything larger.
"We still have to go all the way to Hillsboro still," Becky Ballman said.
Now nine months later, what was meant to be a temporary fix has become the new normal for the small village of roughly 1,500.
"Everyone just coping with what we have and that is basically it," Pac said. "I think (USPS) is just waiting for us all to shut up."
Pac said he asked the postal workers Monday if they knew when the post office would reopen, but got the same answer he always does.
"They said that they had no idea," he said.
WCPO reached out to USPS for an updated timeline and an answer as to why, more than a year after the fire, renovations still aren't complete. A spokesperson replied with a statement:
We are having issues with the internet and are working with the landlord. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working toward to a speedy resolution to this issue.
Pac worried with all the previous delays, a speedy resolution would turn into another lengthy, indefinite wait.
"I don't know what their long-term plan was with any of it at all," Pac said.
Ballman said she's heard rumors once the original building finally reopens and mail services fully resume, the modular unit they've been using for the past year will be torn down. If that happens, she questions why it was built in the first place.
"They sunk money into building this facility when the money that was used to build this facility probably could have been spent to repair the old facility," said Ballman.
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