San Antonio: Heavy rains in San Antonio rapidly flooded roads, swept away submerged cars and sent some people scrambling up trees to escape fast-rising waters on Thursday while firefighters made dozens of rescues across the seventh-largest American city. At least four people died and two were still missing, authorities said.
The deaths all occurred in the northeast part of the city, where authorities found over a dozen vehicles in the water. Photos and video showed smashed and overturned vehicles submerged in a creek.
Some of the people rescued in that area said they were swept off an interstate access road by “sudden fast rising water,” San Antonio Fire Department spokesperson Joe Arrington said in an email. He said floodwaters swept vehicles into a creek and carried them downstream.
Crews were bringing in search dogs on Thursday afternoon to help find missing people, Arrington said.
By afternoon, crews could be seen pulling heavily damaged vehicles out of the creek.
Calls for water rescues began before sunrise, officials said. Two women and two men were found dead, according to police Chief William McManus, who did not have their ages.
“There were several people that were caught in that water that had climbed up into trees and we did do a couple of rescues out of trees and some rescues out of vehicles,” said fire department spokesperson Woody Woodward.
From midnight to 8 am, the fire department made 65 water rescues, officials said. Ten people were rescued in the same area as where people were found dead, including four people who were taken to the hospital for injuries.
The flooding occurred after a round of slow-moving showers and thunderstorms in the San Antonio area during the early morning hours of Thursday, said Eric Platt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Over seven inches (17 centimetres) of rain fell in parts of the San Antonio area, according to the weather service.
By midmorning, flooding was receding, though Platt noted that rain was still falling in some areas. He didn’t expect additional rain to be as heavy as overnight but said anything that falls on saturated ground can lead to flooding.
