Flood water in Turkey Creek tunnel in Kansas City, Kansas, recently swamped a boat holding four workers who were left fighting for lives until a rescue was completed by emergency services.
The workers were trapped by the rising floodwater when attending to flood control measures in the almost 400m long tunnel, which was recently restored as part of a US$92M flood control scheme. The tunnel links Turkey Creek with Kansas River, and they routinely travel through by boat.
But on their way to place sandbags on a dam inside the tunnel to hold back flows from the Kansas River, in late April, the rising waters inundated and capsized the boat. One worker, Cliff Keppen, a labourer for contractor Merco/Obayashi, told local media at the time of the rescue that the incident occurred in almost 3m depth of water.
Two workers made their way to an overflow pipe up the tunnel wall from where they managed to crawl along its length to the tunnel mouth. Keppen swam to a pipe on the tunnel wall where he was joined by the fourth worker, from where they were rescued after being in the water for more than one hour by members of the fire department in an inflatable boat.
One of the firemen commented on the difficulty of the environment being added to by the noise from the floodwater and the darkness in tunnel. Reports equated 25mm of rainfall in the area as corresponding to a rise of approximately 1.25m in the water depth.
