Flash Floods in South Carolina, Georgia Cause Washouts, Kill 3

Flash floods washed out roads and bridges Friday and caused a train derailment that closed a highway. Two people died when their car plunged into a washed out road, and a baby was swept to its death in nearby Georgia.

The driver of a school bus with six children on board stopped just before the edge of the large road-washout where the fatalities occurred. “It’s just a miracle that school bus didn’t go in it,” Hampton County Coroner Gordon Rhoden said.

Up to 9 1/2 inches of rain fell Thursday night and Friday morning as thunderstorms rolled along the Georgia border about 70 miles south of Columbia, S.C., the National Weather Service reported.

More than two dozen roads were closed in Allendale, Bamberg, Hampton and Colleton counties because of flooding or washouts, state Highway Department officials said.

In some neighborhoods near downtown Fairfax, water covered front porches. Some people rowed to their houses in boats.

George Bowers, who fled his house with his wife, estimated that at least 20 families left his neighborhood. Dozens more who evacuated elsewhere went to shelters at churches and schools.

A couple drowned when their car and two others plunged into a creek that washed out a culvert along a rural road in Hampton County, creating a 40-foot-wide hole, coroner Rhoden said. The two were trapped in the car when it was swept downstream in about 20 feet of water.

Three people in the other cars that plunged in were injured but were able to climb out, Rhoden said. Heavy rain at the time made for poor visibility.

In an adjacent section of eastern Georgia, a 2-week-old baby was swept from its mother’s arms near Millen as the family was being evacuated because of flooding.

“The mother was walking out the door and she had the baby in a blanket and it slipped out,” Jenkins County Sheriff Bobby Womack said. The body was found later.

In Allendale County, water five feet deep in places washed out CSX railroad tracks in the Duck Branch community where two engines and 15 cars of a freight train derailed, said Alma Maner, a spokeswoman for the town of Allendale.

No one was injured.