ROSE HILL, Kan. (AP) A Kansas mother who was caught in flash flooding says she is “blessed” after she and her 3-year-old son were rescued from a tree limb.
The Wichita Eagle reports that 32-year-old Cassandra Phillips of Burlington pulled her toddler, Ethan, from his car seat Friday night after floodwaters rose in a rural area south of Rose Hill. She spent the next hour clinging to the tree limb with one leg while holding her son in the crook of an arm and talking to emergency dispatchers on her cellphone.
The National Guard soldier and mother of three says she didn’t mean to drive her minivan into a flood. She says the light was dim and she was focused on the “white lines of the road” when the van suddenly began floating.