Tornado Cost Wichita, Kansas Area $146.3M

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Sedgwick County, Kansas, officials say the tornado that hit Oaklawn and southeast Wichita on April 14 caused an estimated $146.3 million in damage.

County officials say the tornado damaged or destroyed 776 homes and 86 businesses, and affected another 3,481 residences and 165 businesses. That total includes 11 homes that were totally destroyed.

The tornado was one of many that raked communities across the Midwest and Plains leaving six people dead and at least 29 injured in Oklahoma as a vast severe weather front plunged eastward on April 15 across the nation’s midsection.

In addition to tornadoes, lightning, large hail and heavy downpours accompanied the system, which was so large that it posed a severe weather threat from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan in the north to eastern Texas and Louisiana hundreds of miles to the south.

The Wichita Eagle reported that mobile homes are not included in the damage figure for Wichita. In Wichita’s Pinaire Mobile Home Park, 92 mobile homes suffered more than 50 percent damage.

Other damage reported was to power poles, traffic signals and street signs.

The city of Wichita is still estimating the cost of repairing a sewer treatment plant that lost much of its roof.

Spirit AeroSystems, which was hit hard by the tornado, said its employees helped with a a massive cleanup of tornado damage. Spirit CEO Jeff Turner says about 1,000 people worked to clean debris, test equipment and make other repairs since the Wichita company took a direct hit from the EF-3 tornado.

The Wichita Eagle reported that some production at Spirit resumed on April 20 but full production restarted on April 23.

Turner says work was expected to be a bit chaotic at first as the company ensures that all parts and other supplies are available. Suppliers have been told to resume deliveries but Turner says it will take time to rebound from lost production.

And some of the repairs at the plant are temporary until permanent repairs can be made.

Two weeks after the storm, with debris cleanup moving forward, immediate relief efforts for Kansas tornado victims were scaled back as disaster help moves into the next stage.

In late April, the Small Business Administration began taking applications for low-interest federal loans to homeowners, renters, businesses and nonprofit groups whose property was damaged or destroyed by the April 14 storms. The SBA loans are available in Sedgwick, Butler, Cowley, Harvey, Kingman, Reno and Sumner counties.