Flooding from Missouri to Ohio kills at least 13, leaves 3 missing

A 65-year-old Ohio woman appeared to have drowned while checking a sump pump in her home.

PIEDMONT, Mo. (AP) — Untold numbers of people trapped by flooding from Missouri to Ohio needed rescue from their roofs, their cars, trees and the raging water itself. Most of the time, they got it.

Outside Evansville, Ind., a man whose truck was swept away at a boat ramp was clinging to a tree in the Ohio River when crews rescued him early Wednesday.

Firefighters northeast of Cincinnati in Symmes Township pulled two members of a girls cross-country team from a rain-swollen creek late Tuesday. And the southeast Missouri town of Piedmont had “some serious touch-and-go rescues,” including people taken from rooftops and trees, said Eric Fuchs, Wayne County emergency management director.

Heavy rain over two days — totaling a foot in some places — pushed rivers and creeks out of their banks and into many low-lying areas. At least 13 deaths were linked to the weather, and three people were missing.

Sometimes the rescuers needed rescuing themselves. In southeastern Missouri, a Missouri Water Patrol boat and two local emergency rescue boats capsized in an effort to save two boys from fast-moving water and debris in Hurricane Creek south of Winona.

The boys and one of the rescuers had to cling to trees, patrol spokesman Lt. Nicholas Humphrey said. With no air support available, the water patrol eventually rescued the three with ropes.

Flooding was reported in large areas of Arkansas and parts of southern Illinois, southern Indiana and southwestern Ohio, and schools were closed in parts of western Kentucky because of flooded roads.

Five deaths were linked to the flooding in Missouri, five people were killed in a highway wreck in heavy rain in Kentucky and a 65-year-old Ohio woman appeared to have drowned while checking on a sump pump in her home. In southern Illinois, two bodies were found hours after floodwaters swept a pickup truck off a rural road.

Searches were under way in Texas for a teenager washed down a drainage pipe, and two people were missing in Arkansas after their vehicles were swept away by rushing water.

Searchers in Missouri found the body of Mark G. Speir Jr., 19, on Wednesday about two miles downstream from where he was reported swept into a creek the previous evening.

Key roads were closed in the Cincinnati area, where water 4 feet deep was reported in businesses in the suburb of Sharonville, police said.

Ohio rescue workers were busy helping people out of cars swamped by the flooding.

“The biggest problem has been people driving into floodwater,” Young said. “There are a lot of stupid people. When that sign says ’Road closed, high water,’ that’s what it means.”