Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 24, 1993 TAG: 9307240184
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ST. LOUIS LENGTH: Medium
A boys' home male counselor and three boys believed ages 9 to 10 were dead after flash flooding in a cave at Cliff Cave County Park, south of St. Louis, police said Friday. A police dispatcher said authorities believed a female counselor and at least two other boys were missing.
Before Friday's flash flood the park had been closed for days because of flooding along the nearby Mississippi River and no one had permission to be in the park, St. Louis County parks dispatcher Mike Lower said.
"Whoever these people are that went down there, they went around barricades," Lower said. "They parked their cars and went around them."
The boys were from St. Joseph's Home for Boys, a residential treatment center for boys with emotional problems that is operated by Catholic Charities, the state Division of Family Services said.
The deaths, with others elsewhere in Missouri and in Illinois, boosted the death toll from more than a month of flooding along the upper Mississippi and its tributaries to at least 40.
The thunderstorms came in a day of torrential rain that poured more water into the saturated Missouri River watershed.
"I've got a rain gauge that holds 5 inches and I've emptied it twice" since getting up, said Richard Larsen Jr. of Louisville, Neb.
Mill Creek turned from a trickle to a raging river through the middle of Louisville, a village of 1,000 people. Four people were rescued after their car was swept from a bridge.
While thousands were out of their homes in parts of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, Friday's flooding prompted the Red Cross to open its first evacuation centers for Nebraska flood victims.
The Red Cross said 150 people had registered at a center at Nehawka, with 60 expected to spend the night. At least a dozen people were driven from their homes in Weeping Water, about 25 miles east of Lincoln.
The flooding at Weeping Water brought a new assault on the senses - the smell of rotting corn as water rose into storage bins.
"The weather is the most exciting thing that happens around here," said lifelong Weeping Water resident Beverly Taylor. "But in July, you expect some reporter to fry an egg on the sidewalk and for everyone to talk about the cracks in the ground and the need for a little rain."
Up to 7 inches of rain fell across parts of northwestern Missouri, southwestern Iowa, northeastern Kansas and southeastern Nebraska.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB