Floods follow storms across Plains

TOPEKA, Kan. – Flooding forced hundreds of people from their homes Monday and blocked streets and highways after a weekend of violent thunderstorms across the central Plains.

Kim Moore, her two sons and their dogs were evacuated from their central Topeka home after water rose knee-deep in their street.

“The rescuers brought rafts up to the houses,” Moore said. “My car’s flooded in right now.”

Authorities rescued more than 500 people from flooded homes around Topeka, said Shawnee County spokesman Dave Bevans. He said he had no reports of injuries, and added that water had started to recede by early afternoon.

Eighteen people had to be rescued from rooftops in the small community of Wakarusa south of Topeka, authorities said.

To the east in Missouri, residents were evacuated from numerous communities as the National Weather Service predicted flooding comparable to massive floods in 1993, one of the most costly and devastating in U.S. history, authorities said.

Rivers and streams already were overrunning their banks in parts of northwest Missouri and flooding was expected later in the week farther east. Gov. Matt Blunt declared a state of emergency and authorized the mobilization of Missouri National Guard troops.

D.C. Rogers, the director of emergency services for Clay County, said the town’s 242 residents began evacuating Monday morning as Fishing River, which runs through the center of the low-lying town, began overflowing its banks.

Flooding also blocked roads Monday in parts of Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa.