Toddler found clinging to mother who drowned

The authorities in south-east Texas said that they found a shivering toddler clinging to her drowned mother in a rain-swollen canal after the woman tried to carry the child to safety from Tropical Storm Harvey.

Captain Brad Penisson of the fire-rescue department in Beaumont said the woman’s vehicle got stuck on Tuesday afternoon in the flooded parking lot of an office park just off Interstate 10.

Squalls from Harvey were pounding Beaumont with up to 5cm of rain an hour at the time with 61 kph gusts, according to the National Weather Service.

Capt Penisson said a witness saw the woman take her 18-month-old daughter and try to walk to safety when the swift current of a flooded drainage canal next to the parking lot swept her and her child away.

The child was holding onto the floating woman when a police and fire-rescue team in a boat caught up to them 800m downstream, he said. Rescuers pulled them into the boat just before they would have gone under a railroad trestle where the water was so high that the boat could not have followed.

First responders lifted the child from her mother’s body and tried to revive the woman, but she never regained consciousness.

Capt Penisson said the child was in stable condition at Christus St Elizabeth Hospital. The identities of the mother and child were being withheld until the father, who was out of town, can be notified. AP