Floodwater covered Kansas Turnpike at fatal accident scene, report says

Floodwater covered northbound lanes of the Kansas Turnpike and was flowing across southbound lanes when troopers reached the spot where a Ford Mustang hit a wave of the water, spun around and veered off the interstate into a deadly current, says an investigative report released Friday.

The report by the Kansas Highway Patrol, which comes a week after the accident killed the driver, 21-year-old Zachary Clark of Texas, provides new details about the extent of the flash flooding on the turnpike.

Water in the right northbound lane, where Clark had been driving, was about 10 inches deep. Water in the southbound lanes was estimated at 6 inches deep. The accident occurred in a low spot on the turnpike around 5 p.m. July 10 about 9 miles south of Emporia during a downpour.

The Turnpike Authority has had plans for years to reduce the risk of flooding at that spot. It has been in the process of getting permits to expand the culvert at the location to carry more floodwater and keep water off the highway, Kansas Turnpike CEO Steve Hewitt said Thursday.

One Highway Patrol trooper, who arrived about 9 minutes after Clark’s accident, saw a “large pool of water covering the entire northbound portion of the roadway” and motorists trying to drive through the water. The trooper blocked northbound traffic and asked a Lyon County deputy to halt southbound traffic “where approximately 6 inches of water was flowing moderately through a median break in the concrete wall and across the southbound lanes,” the report said.

Another trooper who arrived about 13 minutes after the accident saw water across both northbound lanes. Some water was flowing through a break in the barrier wall and into southbound lanes, he reported.

At 5:13 p.m., units “on scene shut down both the north and southbound lanes due to water still passing over the roadway,” the report said. At about 5:35, turnpike maintenance employees closed southbound traffic at Emporia. At 5:49, floodwater had receded enough that northbound traffic was let through, and at 5:57, southbound traffic was allowed to resume.

Water vortex

The report released Friday said witnesses watching the car floating in the ditch described seeing a “water vortex approximately 20 feet from the eastern edge of the roadway.”

On Thursday, The Eagle reported the account of an eyewitness who saw Clark and the Mustang disappear in a whirlpool that formed where floodwater was being sucked through a culvert running beneath the turnpike.

The culvert, which is 8 feet high by 8 feet wide and was installed around 1955 when the turnpike was constructed, needs to be expanded and will be expanded, said Hewitt, the turnpike CEO. The goal is to install two additional and larger culverts by the fall of 2016.

The hope is that an expanded culvert system will increase drainage and prevent the kind of suction that pulled Clark under, said Kansas Turnpike spokeswoman Rachel Bell.

The spot where Clark died is about two miles north of the turnpike stretch near Jacob Creek where floodwater swept six people to their death in 2003.

Witnesses ‘in shock’

The trooper who provided most of the detail in the four-page report said he was on his way to assist with other accidents when he was told by the turnpike communications center that Clark’s car had “lost control and slid off the roadway and had been carried away by floodwaters and had now disappeared from sight,” the report said.

When the trooper arrived, several witnesses said the blue Mustang had hydroplaned and gone into the ditch beside northbound lanes, that the car floated for several minutes before it was sucked under and before they could throw something to the driver to help rescue him.

The witnesses “each appeared to be in shock and were visibly shaken,” the report says.

The report noted that earlier in the day, storms in the area had dropped about 5 inches of rain, falling at a rate of 1 inch or more an hour, causing heavy runoff and flooding.

A witness following Clark’s Mustang in the right northbound lane said they were each going about 70 mph, that as the Mustang neared a “puddle of water,” a semi-tractor trailer entered the water in the next lane, causing “a huge wave that went onto Zachary’s (Clark’s) vehicle.” The witness said he “thought the wave from the semi was part of the reason for Zachary losing control of his vehicle,” the report said.

The Mustang “did a 360 in the road and went into the ditch where the body of water was draining.”

The witness estimated the water in the right lane where the Mustang traveled was 10 inches deep. The Mustang “hit the puddle of water at approximately the break in the barrier wall and traveled another 15 feet before entering the ditch.” The car drifted while floating toward the “main drain.”

Clark asked the bystanders what he should do.

The witness said they told him to stay in his car “because the drain was pulling very hard,” the report said. “The car was still floating but sinking slowly.”

The witness said he ran to his truck to grab a hose to throw to Clark, who opened the passenger window and began to climb out.

“But in the time it took to throw the hose the car tipped nose down and was sucked down,” the report said.

Clark was “basically sitting on the window when it happened.”

‘A lot of water’

A second witness, a woman, said she was driving in a rain storm when she saw many brake lights ahead and “a lot of water on the road.” She pulled close to the median to avoid the water.

She saw a man in a blue Mustang and said that “water pulled his car into the water.”

She and other drivers stopped to help, according to the report. She estimated the Mustang was 25 feet off the road. The driver had his window down and was talking.

She also said they told him to stay in the car. As the car “was starting to get pulled towards the drain … she ran to go call 911.” When she returned, the driver and the car were gone.

At about 7:07, a little more than two hours after the Mustang went off the turnpike, a trooper spotted the top of the car in the current southwest of where the culvert spilled out. The trooper and a game warden found Clark’s body at a tree about 50 feet from his car.

Clark, heading into his senior year at the University of Dallas, was on his way back to a summer internship with the Catholic Diocese in Minnesota, his father has said.

Contributing: Bryan Lowry of The Eagle

This story was originally published July 17, 2015 at 6:35 PM with the headline "Floodwater covered Kansas Turnpike at fatal accident scene, report says."