“It’s kind of surreal,” says Reece, who attends the Lindsborg Evangelical Covenant Church, which is roughly 130 miles northeast of Greensburg. “I keep picturing driving down the main street to my parents’ house like I always did.”
Her parents, Leroy and Charlotte Kraft, were visiting in Andover, Kansas, near Wichita, when the tornado struck. Although destroyed, their home was one of the few that still has any walls standing. The view aerial photos of the devastated area, visit the Wichita Eagle newspaper website.
The Krafts hoped to return to Greensburg today, says Reece, who plans to travel to the town on Wednesday. “I’m praying that residents don’t despair, but will have hope.”
Storms wreaked havoc across much of Kansas over the weekend. Brookwood Covenant Church in Topeka was spared flooding that began Sunday evening and reached six feet in parts of the city this morning. More than 500 residents were evacuated from their homes, and all schools were cancelled.
Although the church building was not affected, the rising water did force many people to stay home from services in advance of the flooding so that they could relocate items from their basements, says associate pastor Joan Porter. “It was pretty sparse attendance at the first service.”
Much of the damage was caused when the Shunga Creek that winds through the city overflowed during the middle of the night. The creek is so small that “you’re not even aware of that sleepy little stream,” Porter says.
A small waterway that runs behind her house overflowed a two-and-half-foot rock wall, she says, but had begun to recede. “It’s been an interesting 12 to 15 hours.”
