A desperate search is underway for a missing toddler and her baby brother after their mum was killed when flash floods swept the family’s car away.
Horrified dad Jim Sheils managed to get his four-year-old son Jack to safety and had to watch on in horror as his wife Katie Seley, 32, and his youngest two children were swept away by a ‘wall of water.’
The flash floods in Pennsylvania come as flooding has devastated the East Coast amid extreme weather conditions battering the US.
Authorities in the state deployed 100 people, drones and cadaver dogs in a desperate bid to find missing Matilda Sheils, 2, and her nine-month-old brother Conrad Sheils.
A spokesperson described the search along a creek that drains into the Delaware River as a ‘massive undertaking.’
The devastated family from Charleston, South Carolina, were visiting relatives and friends when they got caught in a flash flood on Saturday.
The children’s dad, Mr Sheils, grabbed their four-year-old son, while the children’s mum and her mother Dahlia, 62, grabbed the other children, said Upper Makefield Township Fire Chief Tim Brewer.
The grandma survived, but Ms Seley was among five people in the area confirmed to have been killed by the floods.
A spokesperson for the local police department said: ‘We would also like to confirm that the people who got caught in the flash flood did NOT drive into a flooded roadway.
‘The water came upon them and that there was nothing they could have done to avoid the suddenness of the raging water.’
Scott Ellis, an uncle to the missing children, described the family as ‘utterly devastated.’
Monsignor Michael Picard of St Andrew Roman Catholic Church, where family members are parishioners, said he spoke with the grandparents Sunday.
‘No matter how long I’ve been doing this – over and over and over, many, many years – you find yourself still helpless and without words to make people feel more comfortable,’ Monsignor Picard said.
‘And so you just simply pray with them for a few minutes.’
Pennsylvania’s flash floods also drowned Enzo Depiero, 78, and Linda Depiero, 74, of Newtown; Yuko Love, 64, of Newtown; and Susan Barnhart, 53, of Titusville, New Jersey, Bucks County Coroner Meredith Buck said.
The county commissioners signed an emergency declaration in response to the flooding.
Other parts of the saturated Northeast began drying out Monday after drenching weekend rains resulted in flash flooding in parts of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency Sunday.
