Kansas City Public Library: The Plaza Flood – KCQ Investigates A 1977 Disaster

Press release from the Kansas City Public Library:

November 17, 2021

Strings of colored lights have been going up on the Country Club Plaza in preparation for the annual Evergy Plaza Lighting Ceremony, and on Thanksgiving night, the holiday season will officially get underway with the flip of a switch.

Seasonal traditions on the Plaza are a cornerstone of Kansas City culture; without them, the city wouldn’t be the same.

After reading our recent 1951 flood story, a reader thought about what it would mean if a flood hit the shopping district. She asked “What’s Your KCQ?,” a collaboration between The Star and the Kansas City Public Library, about the 1977 flood that damaged the Plaza and other parts of town.

Late summer of that year was like many others on the Plaza. Free outdoor concerts along Brush Creek attracted large crowds to hear the likes of Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington and the Kansas City Philharmonic, and merchants prepared for the busy shopping season to come.

Around midnight on September 12, 1977, heavy rain began and persisted into the morning. By the time a second wave of storms hit that evening, the ground was saturated. Sixteen inches of rain fell that night.

In spite of a flash flood warning, Plaza nightlife continued. Then Brush Creek began to overflow its banks.

What was later described as the worst rainstorm in the city’s history sent five feet of water rushing over Ward Parkway. A bartender at the Plaza III told The Star, “There were cars floating by windows, with people in them, and still there were folks sitting there eating dinner.” Others raised toasts to the flood waters outside. It took the water pressure bursting the restaurant’s doors for the diners to finally escape from the back entrance.

The water rose so suddenly that 385 people attending a concert at the Alameda Plaza Hotel had to be evacuated in a foot of standing water. The first floors of the department stores along Ward Parkway and Nichols Road also flooded, and the current in Brush Creek was so strong that it tore away portions of its concrete lining and deposited them downstream.

A damaged gas main somehow ignited, and the resulting explosion started fires in buildings along the 600 block of W. 48th Street. Witnesses later described a scene that looked like the aftermath of an air raid.

By water or by fire, 77 of the 155 Plaza businesses were damaged that night.

Once the rain stopped, locals surveyed the damage. Some took the opportunity to swim down flooded streets. Others grabbed retail goods floating in the current.

Many wondered how this could have happened.

To maximize real estate along its north bank, Plaza developer J.C. Nichols rerouted it. Still subject to overflows, in the 1930s, the city approved a plan to the creek to ease drainage into the Blue River to the east. Workers poured tons of Pendergast Ready Mix Concrete into the streambed to create a massive, open storm drain.

Additionally, 1920s-era sewers weren’t designed to channel the amount of run-off the heavily-paved Plaza could generate during a massive storm.

This press release was produced by the Kansas City Public Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.