(WHDH) — Two children are missing after fierce floodwaters swept them away while North Carolina was slammed with wild weather.
Crews are desperately searching for the two children who were tossed from their boat by ferocious floodwaters that hit just south of Raleigh.
“The amount of water and the current is so strong, it overcomes you when you start to turn a boat and you’re in debris and trees and such, so they were fighting against that as well.” Fire Chief John Blanton said.
Blanton said the team aboard one boat was able to pull the mother to safety and almost grabbed one of the two children before that child slipped away.
“So when they’d hit a tree, they’d flip over,” he said. “That’s basically what the conditions they were in last night.”
The woman’s sedan was found downstream, but the children — a 4-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl — were nowhere to be seen.
Family members searched the area while a helicopter circled above.
Rescue teams used all-terrain vehicles to haul out boats. Four of them lost in the water overnight.
“Obviously our guys are very professional. They know how to operate boats, but because of the current — the intense current — it was a struggle to keep them upright,” Blanton said.
He continued to say that a search like this takes a toll.
“These guys take their jobs very seriously. They’re professionals. And any time there’s something like this, it’s very stressful,” he said. “Just pray for them and keep them in your prayers too.”
The town’s sheriff said deputies are holding out hope and treating this as a search and rescue mission.
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