Five people have been found dead and two others are missing in San Antonio, Texas, after heavy rains caused flooding on highways throughout the city, authorities said Thursday.
Heavy overnight rains led to water rescue calls just after 5 a.m. in northeastern San Antonio, near the city’s Perrin Beitel neighborhood.
The San Antonio Fire Department confirmed in a news release that five people were confirmed dead and two were unaccounted for. Two men and two women were among those found dead, according to CBS affiliate KENS-TV. There were no further details about the fifth victim.
The identities of the victims have yet to be released, but one of the victims was identified as a 77-year-old woman, according to KENS.
The fire department believes that those rescued or located were initially in their cars sitting in traffic, but by the time emergency crews arrived, they had ended up in trees due to water flooding their vehicles.
Fifteen cars were washed away, and 10 people were rescued, according to the fire department, which said it responded to at least 70 water rescues Thursday. Of the 10 rescued, four were taken to hospitals with minor injuries.
The fire department called the response an “extremely difficult rescue effort that covered multiple miles.”
The search is ongoing for the two people who are believed to have been swept away in the floodwaters, the agency said.
“While the majority of the water rescue responses were not severe in nature and consisted of our crews assisting drivers from vehicles that were stalled in high water, several of these calls were harrowing and involved our crews entering swift moving water to effect rescues,” the fire department said in its release.
One woman, Angel Richards, told KENS 5 that her husband, Stevie, was on his way to work when he called to say he was caught in the floodwaters.
“It’s hard because I was on the phone when this happened, and then not to have a lot of communication, to see my car, it’s devastating to me,” Richards told KENS 5. “No one can say to me, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on.'”
Leave a Reply