KCK family bought their home two years ago. Record rain, flooding destroyed it
Tamika Pledger’s children called her screaming on Wednesday evening.
It was late, and Pledger was at work when her 16-year-old daughter shrieked over the phone that the family home they had purchased just two years ago was rapidly filling with water as record rainfall descended on the Kansas City metro.
Pledger hurried back to their home near Metropolitan Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas. She couldn’t believe what she saw.
The entire backyard had flooded, even their above-ground pool, and water rushed into the first floor of the house. Her three children cried in fear and had fled to the home’s top floor.
“I’ve never seen this before in my life,” she told The Star Thursday.
The flood, which started when a neighboring pond overflowed and clogged nearby drains, devastated the family home. Everything on the first floor is done for — clothing, furniture, their beds.
Pledger said water swept under and toppled over their refrigerator. She had just made a large grocery run in preparation for weekend guests they were planning to have.
By midday Thursday, the family hadn’t slept, and their weekend plans had long dropped off the list of priorities. They spent the majority of the day, with some help from neighbors, sifting through the damage, sweeping water and mud from their home and trying to get in contact with their insurance to see whether any of their losses were salvageable.
When they finally came downstairs, they found washed up fish from the pond, spiders, worms, mud everywhere, along with “anything you can think of,” Pledger said.
Homes flooding in KCK when extreme rainfall makes its way into the area isn’t a particularly new issue. Businesses, churches, neighborhoods and vehicles all saw damage this week and earlier this summer when storms prompted flash floods in various parts of the city and elsewhere in the metro.
But this storm was one for the books, according to the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas.
“This storm brought an extraordinary amount of rain in a very short time, and our teams have been working nonstop to respond,” Troy Shaw, public works director, said in a news release Thursday. “Some neighborhoods saw flooding levels we haven’t experienced since 1993. We appreciate residents’ patience as teams continue clearing streets and assessing the damage in the days ahead.”
With staffing limitations and high demand to help homes and businesses across the city’s south end, it will likely take days to get a full overview of damages, according to the Unified Government.
The Pledgers, in the meantime, are doing what they can to clean up their disaster. They couldn’t get a dumpster on the property Thursday, and they know that when they’re finally able to, it’ll be costly.
They’re living on the top floor of the home and plan to do so unless the smell of water damage becomes too much to handle, Pledger said.
“The worst part about it is there’s mud everywhere and the carpets are soaked,” Pledger said. “We don’t have adequate draining systems here, and that’s the problem.”
The Pledgers said any community help would be vital, whether that be financial or through willingness to help with the cleanup. The family set up a GoFundMe account to help them start from scratch.
“Anything anybody can do for us, we would appreciate it.”
