Authorities in North Carolina recovered the body of a one-year-old boy who was washed away in a river after his mother lost her grip on him during Tropical Depression Florence.
A woman and her child were driving to a relative’s house when the mother drove through barricades that were shoved to the side, making her think it was safe to go through, Union County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Tony Underwood told reporters Monday.
Her car was swept off the road and pinned to a grouping of trees. She was able to free the child from his car seat and escape, but the flood waters were deep and moving too fast, causing the woman to lose her grip on the boy.
Body of missing 1-year-old swept away by floodwaters found in Union County. https://t.co/udeQIOdkq7 pic.twitter.com/lXtFKgmomN
— ABC11 EyewitnessNews (@ABC11_WTVD) September 17, 2018
More than 23 people have died so far from flooding caused by Tropical Depression Florence, a storm that hit the Carolinas as a Category 1 hurricane but quickly lost steam while traveling up and down the coast. Seventeen people died in North Carolina and six in South Carolina.
The National Weather Service office in Morehead City, North Carolina, reported that 25.77 inches of rain has fallen at its Hoffman Remote Operated Weather Station, according to a Sunday ABC11 News report in Raleigh-Durham. That total breaks the previous state record of 24.06 inches set during Hurricane Floyd in 1999. (RELATED: Trump Approves Disaster Relief Funds As Florence Leaves 900,000 Without Power)
A group of volunteer weather observers reported elsewhere that a storm total of 30.58 inches in Swansboro, North Carolina, through Saturday morning.
Florence is the third tropical storm system to set a state rainfall record in the past 13 months. The other two were Harvey in Texas in August 2017 and Lane in Hawaii in late August of this year. Harvey set the all-time U.S. tropical cyclone rainfall record, dumping more than 60 inches of rain near Nederland, Texas.
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