SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Heavy rains swamped San Antonio early Thursday, killing at least four people who were swept away in floodwaters as crews rescued dozens of others, officials said.
Fire officials said they were still searching for two people who were missing. Calls for water rescues began shortly before sunrise, according to the San Antonio Police Department.
Two women and two men were found dead, police Chief William McManus said. He did not have their ages.
The deaths all occurred in the northeast part of the city, where authorities found 13 vehicles in the water.
“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.
