hcj

KS - May 19 2025

Topeka 3D Homes; Kansas Tornado Cleanup; KS Tornado Watch; Innovative Bridge; Citizen Journal Expands

Greg Loving

19 May 2025 • 7 min read

Large wedge tornado SW of Plevna, KS at approximately 2348 hours, @JustonStrmRider

Topeka Turns to 3D-Printed Homes to Combat Housing Shortage

Kansas Towns Clean Up After Over 20 Tornadoes Strike Region

Tornado Watch Issued for Portions of Kansas, Missouri

Innovative Bridge Design Solves Flood Woes for Osage County Farmers

Citizen Journal is Expanding Across Kansas

Editors note: in our quest to eliminate nuisance app notifications, our latest app update did just the opposite. If your phone blew up this morning with citizen journal notifications, we know, we’re sorry, and we have a fix. After the next update, you’ll only receive 1) morning US brief banners, 2) evening KS brief banners (this post), 3) occasional posts from me, and 4) opt in local banners.

1. Topeka Turns to 3D-Printed Homes to Combat Housing Shortage

A company hopes to infuse the Topeka housing market with reasonably priced homes produced in a fraction of the time it takes to build traditional stick or modular housing. The answer to Topeka's problem, its leaders say, is to produce 3-D printed homes. Darin Stephens, CEO of Stone & Story Real Estate Group, said the Topeka area has a shortage of available houses. "Normally, in Shawnee County we should have 300 to 400 houses on the market at any given time," Stephens said. "Then COVID — when it was the height of the height and the craziness of the craziness — we had 50 to 60 houses on the market for 175,000 people. So there was a huge demand and minimum like critical inventory got through COVID, started to see that number creep up a little bit, and it's bounced back and forth. "And today it still sits at about 173 houses only. So we should have double that amount of houses on the market." The U.S. has a deficit of about 4.5 million housing units, said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Kansas specifically has lost more than $3 billion in economic output due to the housing shortages. The new 3D printed homes will be produced by Trident Homes to help to address that problem — they will be the first in Topeka. The homes are constructed with concrete and are designed to withstand extreme conditions.The technology allows for faster construction, with a four- to six-month expected completion time vs. a nine- to 12-month one. They're also 60%-70% more energy-efficient compared to traditional construction methods and utility usage, said Chris Stemler, owner of Trident Homes. Trident's 3D-printed homes will range from $150,000-$250,000, depending on square footage.

CJOnline

2. Kansas Towns Clean Up After Over 20 Tornadoes Strike Region

A. Residents were cleaning up Monday after tornadoes struck two Kansas towns — Grinnell and Plevna — on Sunday. Grinnell, a city of just over 250 and 256 miles northwest of Wichita, was devastated, said Gove County Sheriff Shawn Mesch. “Trees are de-leafed, power lines are snapped off, roof blown off Catholic church,” Mesch said in a phone call. “There’s like maybe three homes left standing in the area.” Roughly 15 to 20 homes were destroyed and the city has no power. Mesch said the power should come back on no later than Friday. There were no reported injuries or deaths, just “bumps and bruises,” he said. The National Weather Service in Goodland had limited details on the tornado Monday. Survey crews are out assessing damage and rating the strength of the tornado. Kyle Knight, a lead forecaster at the NWS Goodland office, said the tornado formed from a storm that started in northeastern Kearney County, tracked across Scott County and entered Gove County. Knight did not have the exact time the tornado hit Grinnell. Mesch said it was about 7 p.m. Mesch said of the two tornado sirens in the town, one malfunctioned during the alert.

B. Twenty-one tornadoes were reported to have touched down late May 18 in western and central Kansas, according to a graphic posted on the website of the weather service's Topeka office. Tornadoes damaged homes just before 7 p.m. at Grinnell, along Interstate 70 in northeast Kansas, and just before midnight in the area of Plevna, southwest of Hutchinson in south-central Kansas, the weather service said. No injuries had been reported. The Kansas Department of Transportation said on Facebook that it temporarily shut down lanes of I-70 for a time between miles markers 82 and 87 due to tornado damage and downed power lines in the Grinnell area. Those lanes were reopened early May 19.

Kansas.com, CJOnline

3. Tornado Watch Issued for Portions of Kansas

A tornado watch has been issued for parts of Kansas and Missouri until 9 PM CDT

@NWSKansasCity

4. Innovative Bridge Design Solves Flood Woes for Osage County Farmers

SCRANTON — On a gravel road northwest of this small Kansas town, a picturesque creek with overhanging trees shimmers with brilliant shades of green. The beauty, though, hasn’t made up for the aggravation caused by high floodwaters that sweep the wooden bridge over that creek off its moorings to land about 30 yards or so away from the roadway, leaving the road impassable for area farmers, said Ryan Fine, Osage County public works director. “That old wood one, it kept floating away. If we got a big, heavy rain, it would float down there, and we’d have to grab it out of the trees,” he said, gesturing down the creek. “The last time it happened, I said, ‘Leave that sucker in the trees. I gotta figure this out.’ ” The cost of a new bridge, done with the typical bridge construction the county uses, would have been more than $300,000, Fine said. Instead, with the help of the Soy Transportation Coalition and the Kansas Soybean Association, the total bridge price was about $106,000, attributed to financial help and building a different style of bridge. The new culvert bridge has walls, called headwalls, attached to the sides of the culvert and wingwalls that come out from there to help support the bridge, Fine said. Then large beams are set into the ground to a depth of four or five feet, he said. The top is covered with rock.

Kaleb Little, left, CEO of the Kansas Soybean Association, Raylen Phelon, center, Kansas soybean farmer and vice-chairman of the Soy Transportation Council, and Ryan Fine, Osage County public works director, take a look at a new bridge near Scranton. (Morgan Chilson/Kansas Reflector)

Kansas Reflector

5. citizen journal is Expanding Across Kansas

We talk a lot today about how losing jobs has hollowed out the Heartland, and this is true. But small towns across America have lost more than just manufacturing jobs. They've lost coverage of their municipal governments, lost touch with local kids playing sports, and most importantly, they've lost a common connection to their neighbors.

citizen journal is trying to reinvent the local newspaper for the digital era. We have expanded from McPherson, where we started, to 8 cities in Kansas: Hutchinson, Salina, Lindsborg, Abilene, Junction City, Manhattan, and Hays. McPherson and Hutchinson are ‘full service’ cities, meaning we have local MWF publications there. Our reporters are moms, golf pros, and actual professional, award-winning journalists. We will add more ‘full service’ cities, and we need your help. We’re looking for part-time contributors, so if you or anyone you know wants to help reinvent local news, email me! We are both a news and technology company, and we cover our other six markets with a combination of humans and technology - the future of journalism. We will add more of these cities and will flip them into ‘full service’ markets as we recruit citizen journalists.

If you get this newsletter by email, follow these instructions to get only the emails you want. If you use our iOS or Android app, follow these instructions to subscribe to only the notifications you want. We received 46k views on our website last month and have over 3k app downloads across KS - and America. We're going to sell ads to support this venture. If you're a local business who wants to reach a local audience - in your town or across the state - please consider advertising. And if you ever have any trouble with our website or app, email me - we’re not big enough for a customer support line. -Greg

Hutchinson

Salina

McPherson / Lindsborg

Many more cities coming soon!