By Steve Gorman
July 10 (Reuters) – Flash flooding unleashed by torrential downpours from a wave of thunderstorms struck the Ozark Mountains in rural southeastern Missouri on Friday, trapping hundreds of people in high water along the rain-swollen Black River, officials said.
National Guard teams in Black Hawk helicopters were flying some 200 stranded people to higher ground on Friday afternoon from Camp Taum Sauk in Lesterville, Missouri, about 100 miles (160 km) south of St. Louis, according to State Highway Patrol Sergeant Eddie Young.
About half of the evacuees from the summer youth camp were children, and the rest were counselors and other staff, Young said.
Separately, rescue teams in boats rescued three people who were stranded elsewhere along the river in Reynolds County late in the day, he said. As of Friday evening, no fatalities had been reported.
Earlier in the day, the Reynolds County Sheriff’s Office reported that emergency teams had rescued more than 90 people from floodwaters that inundated homes, campsites and vehicles.
Joann Franklin was one of them, telling St. Louis television station KMOV-TV, a CBS affiliate, that she, her husband and their dog and cat were rescued from the roof of their house.
“This is the highest that the water’s ever been, and I’ve lived here since 1979, so (almost) 50 years,” she said.
Conditions became so precarious that two rescue boats carrying safety workers capsized in the turbulent waters, but crew members were all safely recovered downstream by fellow emergency personnel, the sheriff’s office said.
Another 20 to 30 people listed as missing in Reynolds County were later rescued or turned up safe, including a group reported to have been swept off the roof of a building as it collapsed in floodwaters at the Bearcat Getaway Campground, Young said.
One other person remained missing in adjacent Crawford County, he said.
Numerous roads were washed out through the region, making it difficult for emergency crews to reach many riverfront campgrounds to ensure that nobody else was trapped, but search teams planned to return to those spots as floodwaters receded, Young said.
The Black River and nearby streams were transformed into raging torrents by a series of thunderstorms that dumped 6 to 12 inches (150 to 300 mm) of rain on the region overnight and early Friday morning, according to the sheriff’s office. Additional showers were expected on Friday night in the rain-saturated region.
Several counties in the mountainous, hilly Lead Belt of southeastern Missouri, in the eastern Ozarks, were the hardest hit, officials said. But stormy weather and the potential for further havoc stretched across a much larger region.
Flood watches were posted in parts of eight states encompassing more than 21 million people from Missouri east through southern Illinois and Indiana and into Kentucky and Tennessee, and north into West Virginia, Ohio and western Pennsylvania, according to the National Weather Service.
Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe declared a state of emergency in flood-stricken regions to ease coordination between state and local agencies and hasten disaster assistance.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Tom Hogue)
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