Two election poll workers drown due to flash flooding in Wright County

WRIGHT County Mo. (KBSI) – Water flooding busy roads on Election Day which is making it hard for many people to get to work and get to the polls on such a critical day. 

In the middle of the flooding, a seventy-year-old man and seventy-three-year-old woman lost their lives as they got caught on a road that was experiencing flash flooding. 

They both were found dead on scene as they drowned in their vehicles. 

 “Turn around don’t drown yeah I know you want to get to work or get home to the store. If there’s water over your roadway, you need to figure out another route or wait,” said Myers. 

Robbie Myers is the Butler County Emergency Management Director. He says his number one goal is to keep an eye on the weather conditions. He hopes to do everything he can in his area to keep people safe. 

When it comes to water, he advises people not to take it lightly.

“Going from the extreme drought conditions to the heavy flooding main thing we worried about for folks is flash flooding, and people driving through Stillwater that’s one of the most fatal things we have is people driving through what they think safe water over the road,” said Myers. 

Myers says water can be deceiving if you don’t know how deep it really is. He says most accidents happen when people try to determine the water depth themselves instead of putting off the road.

“A lot of these don’t go down very quickly, but it’s deceptive how deep it is and even more important how rapid it is because they will knock you right off the road here in the state counties to the election, pulling places, getting off the road and losing their lives.”

Myer’s main message to everyone is to let Emergency Management check out the roads before driving.