HOUSTON — Authorities in central Texas have found two more bodies along flooded streams, bringing the death toll from flooding in the state to six.
It was unclear Sunday whether a body found in Travis County near Austin is one of the two people still missing in Texas. An 11-year-old boy was still missing in central Kansas, too.
The latest flooding victim identified by authorities was a woman who died when the car she was riding in was swept from the street by the flooded Cypress Creek about 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, Kendall County sheriff’s Cpl. Reid Daly said.
The car, with three occupants, was in Comfort, about 45 miles north of San Antonio. The driver made it to shore, and a female passenger was rescued from a tree. But Daly said 23-year-old Florida Molima was missing until her body was found around 11 a.m. Sunday about 8 miles downstream. She becomes the sixth flood-related death in Texas this Memorial Day weekend.
In Bandera, about 45 miles northwest of San Antonio, an estimated 10 inches of rain overnight led to the rescues of nine people.
The rain caused widespread damage, including the collapse of the roof of the Bandera Bulletin, the weekly newspaper, KSAT-TV in San Antonio reported. Photos from the area showed campers and trailers stacked against each other, but no injuries were reported.
Torrential rains caused heavy flash flooding in some parts of the US over the last few days, and led to numerous evacuations in southeast Texas, including two prisons.
But the threat of severe weather has lessened over the long Memorial Day holiday for many places, though Tropical Depression Bonnie continued to bring rain and wind to North and South Carolina.
Near Austin, a crew aboard a county STAR Flight helicopter found a body Sunday on the north end of a retention pond near the Circuit of the Americas auto racing track, which is close to where two people were reported to have been washed away by a flash flood early Friday, Travis County sheriff’s spokesman Lisa Block said. The body still must be recovered and no identification has been made. — AP
