Fresh flooding hell as Oklahoma boys and girls club race to escape biblical torrent a week after Texas storm

Daily Mail​

3 days ago

Dozens of children were rushed to safety in knee-deep water as flash floods turned an Oklahoma street into a raging river.
The Boys & Girls Club in Sallisaw, near the Arkansas border, was forced to evacuate Tuesday morning as heavy rain fell and flooded the River Valley.
Nearly a foot of water seeped into the club, located on the town's Main Street, as a Biblical-style torrent pounded the area.
Police, firefighters and clubhouse staff escorted the children out of the building, some having to be carried, and through the flooded street to their parents' cars.
'There were a lot of kids, terrified, screaming and crying,' Kayla Jean, whose 10-year-old son was among those evacuated, told Daily Mail. 'They hadn't ever experienced anything like this.'
Jean says heavy rain fall hit the region unexpectedly Tuesday morning, with water levels 'dramatically' rising to 'extreme' levels in just a matter of minutes.
The unprecedented downpour eerily mirrors the catastrophic flooding in Texas last week that saw the Guadalupe River swell more than 30ft in just 45 minutes before claiming the lives of more than 100 people, including dozens of children.
Over 100 remain missing, sparking fears that the death toll will soon rise substantially.
The situation in Sallisaw, thankfully, was handled swiftly and without tragedy. Roughly 50 children were taken from the clubhouse to safety, police told KHBS.
More than a foot of water rushed into the Boys and Girls Club in Sallisaw Tuesday morning as torrential rain pummeled the River Valley.
Jean, a photographer and mother-of-two, received a call around 9.48am informing her that staff had to 'evacuate and close the club due to flooding', she told Daily Mail.
'I didn't know the severity of it yet,' she explained, recalling how the water levels were so high that her boss didn't think her car would make the 10-minute drive.
'My boss told me "it's so bad you probably can't take your car." So my co-worker took me down in his lifted truck to get my son out.'
She made it to the clubhouse within minutes of getting the call, but says during that time period 'those levels just increased dramatically'.
'I don't think we even had a full chance [of rain], it was a 30 to 40 per cent chance of rain that day. But when it started raining, it was heavy, the radar wasn't moving. It just stayed right over us - four to five inches came quickly,' she recalled.
Jean made it to her son who she described as being 'scared' but 'awkwardly smiling through it'.
'I asked my son "were you scared?",' she recalled. 'He said, "Honestly, yeah, I've never seen anything like that".'
She added: 'The staff at the Boys and Girls club was amazing. The city workers, electrical workers, police, firefighters, they were all amazing. They did a great job keeping kids calm.'
Emma Taylor, 10, who was at the clubhouse before the evacuations claims that dozens of children were forced to stand on their chairs in an attempt to stay dry as the water poured in.
The youngsters were eventually carried out of the club Tuesday morning after it became clear that the flooding was only going to get worse.
'They carried me all the way to my mom's car was…we had to walk all the way through the water,' Taylor told KHBS.
The ten-year-old said her entire body, up to her chin, was 'soaking wet'.
Taylor - like Jean's son - was shocked by the incident, telling the outlet: 'I was like, are you kidding me? This really had to happen.'
But the adults in the little girl's community were relatively unfazed by the situation, alleging the roads get 'bad' in the village 'every time' there is heavy rainfall.
'I've lived here going on a little over six years, and it does every year when we get a significant amount of rain,' Taylor's next door neighbor Susan Jordan told the TV station.
Jordan called on officials to invest in a 'better drainage' system so that flooding is no longer a common occurrence and 'kids don't have to be evacuated right next to a drainage ditch'.
Jean, however, says the floods are not typical of the small, rural agricultural village that in 2020 recorded a population of just 8,510 people.
'We haven't ever had flooding to that capacity,' she told Daily Mail. 'There is a low point in our town that does get a lot of flooding - but it has never been this extreme.
'There are some road closures, when it rains heavy in that area of town, but not to the extent of having waist deep water in the Boys and Girls Club.'
The unusual weather system saw the roads flood in a matter of minutes, but then the water levels 'went down tremendously, within a few hours', she said.
The clubhouse was damaged by the flood. Jean says the facility is closed for the rest of the week while repairs are underway.
Staff are hoping to reopen to Boys and Girls Club on Monday, she added.
The flooding in Sallisaw came days after torrents of river water roared through several counties in the Hill Country region of Texas.
More than 160 people still are believed to be missing and at least 115 have died in the floods, authorities said Wednesday. The large number of missing suggests that the full extent of the catastrophe is still unclear five days after the disaster.
At least 115 have died in the Texas floods, including 27 young girls and counselors who were staying at Camp Mystic. People are pictured as they come to pick up items at the all-girls Christian summer camp in Hunt, Texas on Wednesday
The deaths include at least 27 young girls and counselors who were staying at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp along the Guadalupe River, when the river burst its banks and flooded the region in the early hours of Friday morning.
Authorities and community members alike fear the confirmed death toll will continue to surge as hopes fade for finding survivors among the many reported still missing five days after the disaster.
Meanwhile, monsoon rains in southern New Mexico also triggered flash flooding Tuesday and killed three people.
The surge of rushing water was so intense that an entire house was swept downstream in a mountain village that is a popular summer retreat.
A man, a 4-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy were swept away by floodwaters in the village of Ruidoso, about 130 miles southeast of Albuquerque.