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Flooding takes toll countywide

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Torrential rain Monday flooded streets and caused the Cottonwood River and creeks to overflow, but the effects weren’t uniform across the county.

Peabody

Peabody Care Center was damaged, administrator Melissa Parmley said.

“It seeped in around the doors and there was no holding it back,” Parmley said. “Three occupied apartments, one unoccupied apartment, and the one used for massage therapy all suffered water damage.”

Workers moved the three displaced residents into other apartments. Workers removed all the water they could and were waiting for professional carpet cleaners Tuesday.

Peabody City Council received word Monday night that Doyle Creek had overflowed, flooding areas near Peabody Farm Service, Mid-Kansas Cooperative, and the BNSF tracks. The city park and Locust and Peabody streets had flooded earlier in the day.

City workers put 24 barricades on streets to prevent people from driving through floodwaters. An underpass on 9th Street beneath railroad tracks flooded for the first time in many years. A pair of storm drains may have been plugged when debris washed into them with the storm waters.

“They were cleaned out several years ago, but they can get plugged up pretty easily,” public works director Darren Pickens said. “We kept vehicles with flashing lights at the top of each incline to steer traffic onto the side streets.”

Peabody Fire Chief Mark Penner decided to move fire trucks out of the fire station overnight as a precaution against flooding.

“We probably dodged a bullet this time,” administrator Shane Marler said. “Mother Nature made a mess, but all in all, we were lucky.”

Good neighbors

Casey and Nicki Case’s crawlspace in Marion filled with water, despite the best efforts of their sump pump.

“We live in an old rock quarry, so we’re basically down in a hole,” Casey Case said Tuesday.

The water pooled by the house and seeped through the foundation into the crawlspace. He said their property hadn’t flooded like that since June 2010.

“Brenda and Danny Maddox lent us a portable sump pump that was a big help,” he said.

They used the portable pump to get rid of the water pooled against the foundation and continued to pump out their crawlspace.

“By 9 o’clock we pretty much had all the water gone,” he said.

Floodwaters also covered their dog kennels in 4 inches of mud, which they set to cleaning before it could harden.

“Between pumping water and shoveling mud, we were pretty busy,” he said.

Sandbagging in Durham

Durham residents and volunteers from Morning Star Church filled sandbags as a precaution to protect buildings on Main Street, but the precaution was unneeded.

Mark Wiebe said there were between 50 and 75 volunteers filling sandbags with sand provided by the county. The filled bags were placed at the front and back entrances of businesses downtown.

“We probably didn’t need it, but it was scary because the river was up about 4 feet,” Gary Unruh said.

Harry Rhodes said water lapped at the threshold of G & R Implement, and some got into the store, but there was no damage. The last time Durham flooded, in 2008, there were 18 inches of water on Main Street, he said.

Last modified Aug. 1, 2013

 

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