An oil spill added to the misery caused by widespread flooding as thousands of evacuees in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas waited for water to recede from their homes.
Kansas got a break from the weather on Monday, but more rain was scattered over Texas and eastern Oklahoma, the latest in nearly two weeks of storms. It was the 20th straight day that rain had fallen in Oklahoma City.
FLOATING GOO
A pumping malfunction during the weekend allowed 16,000 liters of crude oil to escape from the Coffeyville Resources refinery into the swollen Verdigris River in south-central Kansas, producing a floating slick that could be seen and smelled from the air. The goo coated pets, possessions and emergency workers.
The US Environmental Protection Agency had teams on the scene, said Jim Miller, Montgomery County emergency manager.
About a third of the homes in Coffeyville and a quarter of homes in Independence had been evacuated, he said, and water intakes for Coffeyville, Independence and Elk City had been shut down.
The oil was floating downriver toward Oklahoma and that state's Oologah Lake, about 48km northeast of Tulsa, said Major General Tod Bunting, the Kansas state adjutant.
Oklahoma officials were optimistic the spill would dissipate before it reached the lake, which provides flood control, drinking water and recreation.
Elsewhere in Kansas, residents of Osawatomie were waiting for Pottawatomie Creek and the Marais des Cygnes River to recede. Forty percent of its 4,600 residents evacuated on Sunday.
An estimated 2,500 to 3,000 people were forced from their homes over the weekend around Bartlesville and Dewey because of flooding from the Caney River in northeast Oklahoma, said Kary Cox, Washington's County's emergency management director.
RECORD HIGHS
The Caney crested on Monday afternoon at 6.64m, nearly 2.74m above its 3.96m flood stage, and was beginning to subside, Cox said.
On Monday night, US President George W. Bush on declared a major disaster in Kansas and ordered federal aid for recovery efforts related to storms and flooding that began on June 26.
The Neosho River in northeast Oklahoma was at 6.71m on Monday, 2.13m above flood stage, and was expected to crest yesterday at 8.53m, forcing people out of two more towns.
Albert Ashwood, director of the Oklahoma Office of Emergency Management, said that 200 to 250 homes statewide had been damaged by floodwaters and that the number could rise.
Hundreds of people in northern Texas were still unable to return to their homes near the Wichita and Brazos rivers because of flooding, power failures or fears of contaminated water.
In central Texas, a 14-year-old boy who had been playing with his younger sisters was rescued from an Arlington drainage channel after being swept through at least three culverts, Fire Battalion Chief David Stapp said.
Eleven deaths have been blamed on the storms and flooding in Texas, where two men are missing.
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