A tornado-producing storm tore through southeast Kansas on Sunday night, injuring at least one person and leaving extensive damage in its wake. In Sycamore, a man was pulled from rubble by first responders and taken to a hospital in Nodesha for treatment.
The storm was big enough to affect as many as 170 properties, county officials said Monday morning, and it caused significant damage to several homes. In Sycamore, north of Independence, the violent weather snapped nine power lines along U.S. 75, triggering outages across southeast Kansas and adding another layer of trouble to a night already marked by destruction.
Representatives from the National Weather Service in Wichita were in Sycamore on Monday to assess the damage and determine the tornado’s intensity level. Their work will help fix the storm’s place in the official record, but for the people who lived through it, the damage was already plain to see: broken homes, darkened neighborhoods and one man who had to be cut free from the rubble before he could get medical care.
Montgomery County commissioners signed a letter Monday morning asking for a formal disaster declaration, a step that would open the door to state resources for response and cleanup if the governor approves it. The storm’s reach went beyond Sycamore, too. The Columbus school district in neighboring Cherokee County called off classes on Monday after the destructive weather swept through the area Sunday night.
The immediate question now is not whether the storm was serious. It was. The issue is how much help southeast Kansas gets next, and how quickly state officials move from assessing the damage to declaring the disaster that local governments are already asking for.
