Oklahomans Hope Aging Levees Hold Out Amid Near-Historic Flooding in the Heartland
Residents in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and surrounding communities are preparing for severe flooding and evacuating areas near the Arkansas River as it continued to rise Tuesday.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt amended a State of Emergency declaration to cover the entire state because of flooding and severe storms, according to AccuWeather.
The Tulsa area is one of many spots, including Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri, reacting to record-breaking floods this week.
Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum appeared on NPR Tuesday to discuss how the area’s aging levees are doing with the near-historic floodwaters, which have hovered around 23 feet compared to the record of 25.21 feet set in 1986. More than one million people could be affected, according to CBS News.
“These are 70-year-old-plus earthen levees that were constructed in the ’40s. And they have — while they’ve had higher water levels on them, that high-water level was for about 12 hours. We are looking at probably a week to 10 days of levels at this — ‘this levee system has just never been tested the way it is right now,” Bynum said.
Hundreds of residents west of Tulsa have evacuated their homes, and officials shut down several roads near the river, according to AccuWeather. Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers has been releasing water from the Keystone Dam near Tulsa to offset rainfall.
The flooding hit states that made it through tornadoes that swept the heartland. At least 19 tornadoes hit states including Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri last week according to CNN.
In Oklahoma, two people died and 29 were injured after a tornado tore through a mobile home park near Oklahoma City, reported the Associated Press. A second tornado hit a Tulsa suburb.
Due to flooding, @TulsaPolice will be closing Riverside Drive between 21st St. and 31st St. immediately.
Riverside also remains closed in both directions north of Denver Ave.
There are no plans to close Riverside between 31st and 51st.
Please stay away from these areas.
— City of Tulsa (@cityoftulsagov) May 28, 2019
Residents as far east as Washington, D.C., hunkered down amid a tornado warning May 23.
The extreme weather gave Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a reason to blame the devastation on climate change.
“The climate crisis is real y’all,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Instagram May 23, “guess we’re at casual tornadoes in growing regions of the country?”
The congresswoman was fact-checked by meteorologist Ryan Maue, who pointed out that far from proof of a “climate crisis,” D.C.’s tornado warning was “just the weather.”
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