50 kids evacuated from Oklahoma Boys & Girls Club after torrential downpour sparks flash floods through town center

About 50 kids at a Boys & Girls Club in Oklahoma were evacuated early Tuesday morning after a sudden storm blew flash floods straight into the town’s main street — less than a week after powerful Texas floods killed 120 people, including 27 young campers and counselors.

The Boys & Girls Club in Sallisaw, near the Arkansas border, quickly evacuated during the middle of camp when heavy rains forced a flood right into the sleepy town center.

Nearly a foot of water blew in from under the doors in just 15 minutes while a storm pounded overhead.

The area, while prone to flooding, had never seen anything like Tuesday’s flash flood, locals said.

“We were trying to gauge how much it was going to flood. When it started rushing in really bad, we decided we needed to shut the Club down and evacuate the kids,” Sequoyah County Boys & Girls Club’s CEO Laura Kuykendall told 40/29 News.

A joint effort between local police, firefighters and clubhouse staff escorted the 50 children out of the Club — where some rescuers even hoisted kids up onto their shoulders to carry them to safety.

“We had to carry the kids out because they couldn’t get in the water. It was very deep outside. We were trying to keep them calm because they’re scared, they’re afraid,” Kuykendall said.

Many of the children were sobbing and screaming all the way to their parents’ waiting vehicles at the fire department, in part because some had heard about the disastrous flooding in Texas’s Kerr County just one state over, Kuykendall said.

Early in the morning on July 4, flash flooding surged through Kerr County after the Guadalupe River flooded, rising more than 20 feet high.

Residents of the county, namely the pods of summer camps located by the river’s edge, had no idea the flood was coming until it was at their doorsteps.

Rescue crews from across the country are still in the Lone Star State trying to find the estimated 173 people still missing, almost a week after the water dragged entire cabins downstream.

So far, 120 people have been found dead, including more than two dozen campers and counselors with Camp Mystic, a century-old all-girls Christian Camp.

Fortunately, at the Oklahoma Boys & Girls Club, all 50 children were safely evacuated and reunited with their guardians.

Oklahoma is one of at least four states that have experienced flash flooding this week.

Rushing water tore through a mountain village in New Mexico on Tuesday, killing at least three people.

North Carolina could flood again this week after Tropical Storm Chantal made landfall Sunday and forced water rescues that stretched up into Southern Virginia.

Meanwhile, wildfires are breaking out across California and even Alaska.