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Sedgwick County Focusing On Flood Recovery And Damage Assessment

Abigail Beckman
/
KMUW

Sedgwick County officials are doing damage assessment in areas hit hard by recent flooding.

The southern part of the county got the worst of the flooding. High waters swamped areas between Haysville and Derby, near Clearwater and in Mulvane.

Sedgwick County Emergency Management Coordinator Dan Pugh says most of the water has receded, and no rivers are at flood stage.

Pugh says damage assessments are underway of "what damage has happened to roadways, what damages have happened to public buildings and private buildings, and just trying to get a good handle on anything that we have missed while the weather was still raining."

He says the inspections could take more than a week.

The Sedgwick County Emergency Operations Center received 130 storm-related calls by Sunday, including 67 submersions where drivers were trapped in vehicles by rising water.

Pugh says emergency officials used boats for two swift-water rescues where lives were in danger. No weather-related injuries have been reported at this time from the storm or the flooding.

The county ordered more sand bags from the Army Corps of Engineers, and they will be available for pick-up all week at the West County Yard located at 4701 S. West Street.

Pugh says as of Monday morning, there were at least two areas that were still impassable: Oliver just north of 119 Street South and Spruce Street just north of 95th Street South, between Haysville and Derby.

Pugh says the American Red Cross, the United Way of the Plains and the Great Plains United Methodist Church were among several nonprofits helping flood victims in Sedgwick and Sumner counties.

Sedgwick County received two to three inches of rain Friday night in addition to the seven to ten inches of rain the County had received on Thursday night and Friday morning.

Sedgwick County was part of more than 30 state and local organizations that coordinated resources and response efforts in the Sedgwick County Emergency Operations Center.

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Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar

 
To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

 

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.