SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Heavy rains in San Antonio rapidly flooded roads, swept away submerged cars and sent some people scrambling up trees to escape fast-rising waters Thursday while firefighters made dozens of rescues across the nation’s seventh-largest 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 13 vehicles in the water. Photos and video showed smashed and overturned vehicles submerged in the water.
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.
“It’s hard to determine at this point exactly how they got swept away,” San Antonio Fire Department spokesman Woody Woodward said. “But it is an area where there was high water that was moving rapidly and 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.”
The department had made 65 water rescues since midnight throughout the San Antonio area, he said.
The flooding occurred after a round of slow-moving showers and thunderstorms in the San Antonio area during the early morning hours Thursday, said Eric Platt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Over 7 inches (17 centimeters) 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 said he didn’t expect additional rain to be as heavy as overnight but noted anything that falls on saturated ground can be a flooding problem.
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Stengle reported from Dallas.
