Flooding Causes $5.4 Million in Damages in Kansas County

Flooding last week caused more than $5 million in damage to buildings in Shawnee County, Kan., said Mark Hixon, county appraiser.

The American Red Cross provided a list of addresses of flood-damaged structures that Hixon’s office used to make a preliminary estimate of $5,375,000 in damage to buildings in Topeka and the unincorporated community of Wakarusa in southern Shawnee County.

The estimate doesn’t include flood damage to vehicles, Hixon said. The preliminary figures show flooding on May 7 damaged buildings on 340 parcels of land in Shawnee County.

Hixon said it was likely any subsequent structural damage estimate would be higher, because the list the Red Cross provided didn’t contain the addresses of some buildings that stood between other flood-damaged structures and probably also sustained damage.

The Red Cross reported buildings on 12 parcels of land in Shawnee County sustained “severe” damage, meaning there was more than a foot of water on the main floor, he said.

Buildings on 290 other parcels sustained “moderate” damage, meaning there was more than an inch of water on the main floor, while flood-damaged buildings on 38 parcels had “minimal” damage that was confined to the basement or amounted to less than an inch of water on the main floor, Hixon said.

He said his office used guidelines from an emergency management guidebook to estimate dollar damages to buildings, depending on how high the water got inside.

His office estimated homes sustained damages equal to 10 percent of their appraised value if they had minimal damage and 25 percent if flood damage was moderate.

Dollar losses were estimated to be 35 percent or more when damage was severe, depending on the amount of damage that was present, Hixon said.

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Information from: The Topeka Capital-Journal,

http://www.cjonline.com

AP-CS-05-17-07 1238EDT