MANHATTAN — This week is the 59th anniversary of what those who lived through it would like to forget – the 1951 floods. It was one of the greatest natural disasters in the recorded history of Kansas. The floods on the Marais des Cygnes, Kansas, Verdigris and Neosho Rivers devastated 154 communities and called $1 billion in damage, said state climatologist Mary Knapp. The 1951 was nine feet above the highest recorded flood level on the Marais des Cygnes, she said. The disaster sparked a building frenzy of levees and a system of lakes, including the Ottawa levee system and Pomona and Melvern lakes, she said. That worked, she said. Flood levels in 1993 equalled the 1951 flood but without the serious damage, she said.
Thursday, July 15, 4 p.m.
