Record rainfall caused flash flooding in parts of St. Louis and other areas of Missouri early Tuesday, with reports of rescues from homes and vehicles submerged in flooded roads, officials said.
As officials worked to assess the full extent of the damage, Chief Dennis M. Jenkerson of the St. Louis Fire Department. Louis said at a news conference Tuesday that one person who had been pulled from a flooded vehicle in the southwest part of the city had died. There was about 8.5 feet of water in the area, he said.
Firefighters, he said, had rescued or helped rescue about 70 residents. Property damage was “very significant” in some hard-hit areas, he said, including a section in the western part of the city where 14 or 15 homes had been flooded.
Jim Sieveking, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in St. Louis, described the downpour as “historic,” adding that the city’s daily rainfall record, set in August 1915, was broken in five hours.
“St. Louis received more than seven inches of rain,” he said. “We’ll probably end up with more than eight inches of rain when the rain tapers off this morning.” Up to 10 inches of rain had been reported in areas northwest of St. Louis, he said.
Sieveking said the heavy rains had caused “catastrophic flooding,” with neighborhoods submerged, cars stranded and parts of Interstates 70, 64 and 55 closed. He estimated there had been more than 100 water rescues in the area.
City Fire Department he said on Twitter Tuesday morning responding to multiple reports of vehicles and people trapped in the water.
Flooding swamped roads and closed more than two dozen stretches of major roads that run through the St. Louis. including Interstate 170, a beltway that runs north and south, and Interstate 70, which runs east and west across the region, the state. said the Department of Transportation.
At least four state highways and several other major highways were also closed due to flooding, he said.
In a residential area in the southwest part of the city’s west end, rescuers used inflatable boats to reach about 18 houses where occupants were trapped, evacuating half a dozen people, while others took shelter instead, the St. Louis Fire Department said.
St. Louis was one of more than a dozen residential areas in Missouri and neighboring counties in south-central Illinois that were inundated by heavy rains overnight.
Residents of St. Charles, in the east-central Missouri region, were told to stay home. A county official he told News 4a television channel from St. Louis, emergency dispatchers were overwhelmed with water rescue calls, mostly from areas of St. Peters and O’Fallon.
Flash flood warnings remained in effect for much of the region until early Tuesday afternoon National Meteorological Service said
The rain was expected to leave the region by lunchtime, Mr. Sieveking, adding that the water is then expected to recede into larger streams and rivers in the area.
