A 5-year-old boy has gone missing after he was in a car with his mother, who was rescued from the flooding that has ravaged California.
Kyle Doan went missing Jan. 9, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release on Jan. 10. The office said Doan “was swept away” by “raging floodwaters near San Miguel” and that the search was put on hold due to “extreme weather.”
“The search operations had to be discontinued yesterday after approximately five hours because the extreme weather conditions were making it unsafe for first responders to continue their efforts,” the office said.
Doan and his mother were going to school, and she elected to continue driving because there were no signs about road closures, his father told San Luis Obispo NBC affiliate KSBY. The boy and his mother were in a truck around 8 a.m. when it became stuck in the flooding, according to The Associated Press. Doan has not been declared dead, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Tony Cipolla said, reports the AP.
Officials with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection say a downed tree had obstructed the vehicle, KSBY reported.
Witnesses managed to pull the mother out of the truck to safety, but the floodwaters swept the boy away. An initial search for Doan lasted for seven hours and only found the boy’s shoe, the AP reported.
“A break in the intense storms is allowing today’s search which will involve all available resources of the Sheriff’s Office including the USAR (Underwater Search and Rescue) Team and air operations,” the sheriff’s office said in its Jan. 10 statement.
“The conditions, however, remain extremely dangerous. The water level is high and continues to be fast moving. The public is strongly cautioned not to conduct self-initiated searches and put themselves in harm’s way and become a victim requiring resources that would otherwise be used for searching.”
The sheriff's office tweeted Jan. 10 that the search for Doan will resume the morning of Jan. 11.
The extreme weather that has hit the state has caused at least 17 deaths, more than the number of casualties from the state’s wildfires in the last two years. The rain is not expected to subside anytime soon.