Kansas Turnpike motorists helpless as flood swallowed car, driver

Tim Thomas was one of the motorists who stopped, hoping to help as 21-year-old Zachary Clark got sucked to his death by a whirlpool that formed as flooding overwhelmed a drainage culvert Friday evening beside the Kansas Turnpike.

Right before Clark and his blue Mustang went under, Thomas said, “he just took a deep breath, like he was diving off a diving board. And then he was gone.”

“The whirlpool just sucked his car down nose-first,” Thomas said. “And then the car just completely disappeared in a split second. It’s just unbelievable.”

Thomas and other motorists had gotten out of their cars to try to help Clark, whose Mustang had gone into the flooded ditch after running into 6 to 10 inches of water covering the turnpike. Water surged off the Flint Hills in the flash flood, jammed up against the culvert and formed the whirlpool.

There have been plans for years to expand the culvert to carry more flood water and keep the water off the highway at that spot, about nine miles south of Emporia, Kansas Turnpike CEO Steve Hewitt said in an interview Thursday. For about six months now, a permitting process has been underway for the project. But the work still might not keep future flooding from overwhelming the culvert, which was installed around 1955 when the turnpike was constructed, Hewitt said.

The culvert sits in a low spot on the turnpike, collects flooding from surrounding hills and sends it under the turnpike to the other side. The culvert lies 2 miles north of the spot where flooding swept cars off the turnpike in 2003, killing six, including a mother and her children.

Asked if the current culvert where the latest accident happened is not large enough to drain off floodwater, Hewitt said it needs to be expanded and will be expanded.

Hewitt said he wanted to have construction started as soon as possible; it will take a number of months to complete the project, he said. The goal is to begin construction in the spring of 2016 and complete it by the fall.

“This is a tragedy,” he said of the latest accident, “and we want to prevent those tragedies from happening. If something can save a life, we want to do it.”

Combination of factors

The current culvert, which is 60 years old and is 8 feet high by 8 feet wide, will remain. Two 10-by-8 culverts will be added to the spot, to increase drainage, which will help keep water off the road. The hope is that the increased flow will prevent a whirlpool from forming, said KTA spokeswoman Rachel Bell.

Hewitt said Friday’s tragedy involved an isolated heavy storm that caused flash flooding. A monitor where the 2003 deaths occurred showed Friday’s downpour brought water that rose 6 feet in 20 minutes. There is no monitor where Friday’s accident occurred, he said.

According to the KTA, there had been reports of “localized flash flooding.” A bulletin issued by the National Weather Service said that as of 4:33 p.m., 27 minutes before Clark’s car went off the road at mile marker 118, flooding was expected between mile markers 117 and 125. Another bulletin said that as of 5:40 p.m., 40 minutes after Clark went off the highway, “fast moving water is running over” the interstate between mile marker 118, where the accident occurred, and mile marker 119.

According to witness statements, 6 to 10 inches of water covered the roadway at the site of the accident, turnpike officials said Thursday. The Turnpike Authority released new information Thursday from the Kansas Highway Patrol’s final investigation of the accident.

Thomas, one of the witnesses, told The Eagle that he estimated that water covering the right lane, where Clark was traveling, was around 12 inches deep.

Highway Patrol Capt. Joe Bott, a commander on the turnpike, said he could only assume that as flood water rose in a ditch beside the turnpike, the water spilled onto the roadway.

A witness directly behind the Mustang said he and the Mustang driver were going 70 mph when the accident occurred, Bott said. The posted speed limit is 75 mph.

A semitrailer in the left northbound lane, slightly ahead of the Mustang, disturbed the standing water, sending out a wave of water, KTA said. The Mustang was in the right lane, with its front about even with the rear tires of the trailer, Bott said.

A combination of factors caused the car to go into the ditch: the 2011 Mustang’s light weight, its hitting the water at a higher speed, and the water disturbance caused by the semi, Bott said.

Clark, who was heading into his senior year at the University of Dallas, was on his way to a summer internship with the Catholic Diocese in Minnesota, his father, Barry Clark, said Saturday. The young man wanted to become a therapist or counselor and help emotionally troubled kids, his father said.

Clark’s car went into the northbound ditch, about 150 feet south of the drainage culvert. In a two- to four-minute span, the Mustang floated about 150 feet to the culvert, according to the KTA statement.

“After that, the force of the water moved the vehicle and its driver through the culvert,” the statement said. Crews found the car about 105 feet west of the culvert outlet and 115 feet south; Clark’s body was found about 25 feet southwest of the vehicle.

Seeing it unfold

Thomas, 47, who was on his way to the Kansas City area, saw the tragedy unfold. Some miles before the accident, he had left a service area and noticed a nice-looking blue Mustang pass him going north.

Not long after, Thomas saw the same Mustang out in the brown flood water, floating on top, with the front end down a little, in what seemed like fairly calm water.

Motorists were slowing down; water on the roadway looked about a foot deep to Thomas, and vehicles were moving to the left, where it wasn’t as deep. After Thomas got out of his truck, he yelled out to the Mustang driver, asking if there were any kids in the car. The young driver was on the phone with the windows rolled up. Thomas estimated he was standing 30 to 40 feet from the floating Mustang.

Deep, muddy water separated them.

Bott, the KHP commander, said Clark had earlier been on his cellphone telling his mother that it was raining hard and that he had passed accidents, and she basically told him to stay off the phone, focus on the road and to be careful.

Later Clark told his mother by phone that he was out in the water. Investigators don’t think he was on the phone with his mother when he went under because he had relayed to her that people were trying to rescue him, and she assumed he had hung up, Bott said.

For a time, as Thomas watched, he thought everything would be OK. The Mustang seemed to be floating back toward the road.

But there was trouble ahead – a whirlpool, a giant form of what you see swirling around a bathtub drain. To Thomas, the whirlpool looked like water tornado, twisting and sucking everything down into the flooded culvert.

As the Mustang floated toward the spinning hole, Thomas recalled, Clark rolled down the passenger window, sat on the window sill and said the car was filling with water and asked what he should do.

The bystanders yelled for him to grab onto a flooded tree sticking up 2 to 3 feet above the water.

But as the Mustang approached the tree, “the whirlpool just sucked his car down nose first” and twisted it, Thomas said.

“And it just sucked that Mustang down like it was a matchbox car. It was unreal,” he said.

“It was like a dream that turned into a nightmare.”

A woman who was watching began screaming for someone to go into the water to rescue the man. Someone led her back to a car.

“I can still see his face,” Thomas said of Clark.

Clark looked fearful as he approached the whirlpool, which no one seemed to notice until it was too late, Thomas said.

Clark stayed at the scene until emergency crews found the car and the body.

“I was just praying, by some miracle, that the man was alive,” he said.

The water on the other side of the interstate, where the culvert spilled out, was roaring. It sounded like an opened floodgate on a dam, he said.

“I feel guilty because I didn’t have something to throw to him. I feel so helpless,” he said, saying he would never venture out again without a rope or chain.

The morning after the accident, Thomas, who works for a TV installation company, made coffee, sat down at his kitchen table and cried.

Another eyewitness had run back to his vehicle to retrieve a hose to throw to Clark, but before he could get the life line out, Clark and the Mustang went under, Bott said.

Thomas said he wonders if a guardrail should be installed near the culvert to keep a vehicle from going out into flood water.

In Thursday’s turnpike statement, Hewitt said: “Based upon this report (the highway patrol investigation) as well as our long-term needs study, the KTA will continue to make improvements to meet customer expectations. Our customers want to know the road is safe. We want that too.”

In the past decade, the turnpike has “conducted reviews of nearly all the drainage areas along the roadway, installed water level monitoring systems at two drainage boxes, repositioned concrete median barriers to help facilitate drainage, and contracted with a custom weather forecasting company,” the statement said.

‘Praying the Rosary’

Hannah Belton, a 25-year-old elementary school teacher in Liberal who won that city’s famous Pancake Race this past February, estimated that she had driven through the same area where Clark died just minutes before he lost control.

At times, Belton was driving as slow as 40 mph on the 75 mph interstate to keep from hydroplaning. She could feel the water against the bottom of her car. She had trouble seeing in the downpour, and she turned on the flashers to make her 2013 Volkswagen more visible.

She noticed water rushing – “like whitewater rafting water” – along the interstate beside her as she headed north in the same general area as where flooding killed the six people in 2003. As she drove through the area, she thought of that tragedy.

She saw flood water come up “right beside the highway.”

“I remember thinking it was going to go soon over the highway, it was so close,” Belton recalled. “I felt like if I pulled over and stopped, I was going to get trapped myself, so I just kept on going.”

Belton was so scared, she said, “I was praying the Rosary. … I felt like once I got to Emporia, I knew I would be OK.”

Something needs to be done in response to the latest death, she said. “We pay to be on that road,” she said, “and we should have more protection for the people who use it.”

This story was originally published July 16, 2015 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Kansas Turnpike motorists helpless as flood swallowed car, driver."