Oklahoma Gov. says flooding is of historic proportions, some lives lost
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said despite devastating floods and structural damage from tornados across the entire state, only a handful of lives have been lost so far.
“We've limited the loss of lives, we've only had eight loss of lives across our state,” he told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney on Wednesday. “And so it's just been kind of a crazy couple of weeks.”
Massive storms dumped torrential rains in Oklahoma, Kansas and surrounding states over the past two weeks, causing some farmers in the western parts of the state to lose crops and sending the Arkansas River to “historic” levels in the east.
“We're having to open up the floodgates as there are kind of historic 1986 flood levels all the way down to Arkansas,” said Stitt.
“Muskogee is flooded and we're watching the levee system right around the Tulsa area. And so we've had to evacuate a town of Bragg's. So we've got a lot of homes damaged right now and we're just praying that the floods or the rains will stop up north and that are flowing into this Keystone reservoir,” he explained.
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The Oklahoma National Guard dropped sand in Tulsa on Monday and began patrolling the 70-year old levee system in case things get worse.
“There's a lot of pressure on those levees right now and so we're reinforcing forcing them with different aggregates and making sure that we don't have any leaks. We've dropped some additional sandbags all along those to protect it,” Stitt said.
“But we think we're kind of over the hump -- Muskogee has peaked and the river levels are coming down now. And so that's what we're monitoring,” he explained.