Storms flood Erie Main Street and close highway access
ERIE, Kan. — The town of Erie is no stranger to major floods with ones in 1951, 2007, 2019, and now 2024.
Some of the highways leading in and out of town have been closed due to high water and there’s also been plenty of flooding in town, especially along S Main St.
Marilyn Hazen lives on S Main St. and said, Monday, her house was safe from rising waters — not the case, though for her daughter and son-in-law who live down the street.
“He’s got cattle down there, he’d been checking on things and thought, ‘OK, we’re good’, he went back to the house an hour later, checked again and he said, ‘we got to start moving stuff out’, it came up very quickly,” said Hazen.
“A lot of people I know were still asleep, or in the storm shelters because of all the tornadoes, but the next day, things started happening, and people started, we got to move out of there,” said Butch Klingenberg, Erie Mayor.
Another major concern: the condition of a system of agricultural levees in the area. They’re in place to prevent the loss of bottom land during floods. Almost all of them were underwater Monday.
