Flag Pond is peaceful. In fact, it's a little too quiet for the U.S. Postal Service. It’s not uncommon for Flag Pond’s Post Office to be empty for hours at a time.
With that in mind, it’s no surprise the Flag Pond Post Office is one of nearly 3,700 locations the USPS is considering closing.
“I think it’s terrible,” Flag Pond resident Barbara Simmons said. “There’s no work out here so if people out here wanted to start any kind of a business, how can you do that without a post office?”
In Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, the Flag Pond, Eidson, Mendota, and Fort Blackmore post offices are being studied by the USPS.
“You won’t see any office closing before December on this list,” USPS Communications Manager Beth Barnett said. “As soon as we know what we’re moving forward with, first the community receives notification and there will be an input period for them.”
According to Barnett, many of the locations could be replaced by village post offices in those communities. The offices would offer popular postal products and services in local businesses.
Flag Pond doesn’t have many of those.
“There’s nothing,” Simmons said. “We don’t even have a store anymore. Really, that’s the only place where people run into each other and stay connected.”
The possible closing could leave people who live in Flag Pond with no choice but to drive 20 minutes to Erwin to go to the post office.
“There’s a lot of older people here on fixed incomes and people that have been here for years and years and years and for them to spend $10 in gas to drive to Erwin to go to the post office, that really hurts them,” Simmons said.
The USPS says business has declined due to advances in technology. The recession also took its toll on the agency. The USPS lost $8 billion last year. Many of the locations at risk of closing are in rural communities and have lower volumes of business.
“I can understand why they’d want to close a small post office in a town that has another post office, but closing down the post office in a little town where that’s the only thing that’s there seems kind of crippling,” Simmons said.
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