With forecasters predicting more rain, many of the flooded areas may not dry out until the end of June.
SAND SPRINGS, Okla. — Storm-weary residents in Oklahoma were gutting waterlogged homes Sunday as the Arkansas River continued to crest hundreds of miles downstream and many kept a cautious eye on this week’s weather forecasts showing more rain.
In the Tulsa suburb of Sand Springs — among the first communities inundated when the U. S. Army Corp of Engineers started releasing more water from a dam upriver to control more severe flooding elsewhere — soggy couches and recliners and dumpsters full of carpet, drywall and insulation lined residential streets covered in silt deposited by floodwaters.
Jamie Casto was helping clean up the house where her 65-year-old uncle has lived for 14 years.
Though Casto, 35, said her uncle didn’t have flood insurance because he was told he lived in a 500-year floodplain, a rust-colored line 4 feet from the concrete floor of the garage clearly marked how high water had gotten before they were able to get into the house Friday.
Casto is trying to help her uncle fill out paperwork to apply for emergency loans to help get the house back in order.
She gave Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke a tour of the home while he was in historically red Oklahoma to see damage firsthand. The former Texas congressman said that if he is elected, his plan would include federal grants to invest in communities before disasters strike because the planet is warming and fires, storms and floods are expected to get worse.
