‘He was a great kid’: Search resumes for 5-year-old lost in California floods

LOS ANGELES - Monday was supposed to be Kyle Doan’s first day back at kindergarten after the holiday break. The five-year-old had been recovering from leg surgery in November, when doctors removed a metal rod from an earlier fracture, said his father, Mr Brian Doan, on Tuesday.

Kyle was eager to get back to playing with friends, but, worried about his recovery, his parents told him to wait until the first day of school in January.

He was on his way to do just that on Monday morning with his mother, a special-education teacher at the same school in San Miguel, California, when their car was overtaken by fast-rising floodwaters.

Nearby residents heard his mother’s screams and were able to grab her, but Kyle was carried away.

“My wife told me that my son said, ‘don’t worry, mummy’,” as the car was swept away, Mr Doan recalled, his voice breaking, as the search for Kyle continued.

“My wife feels awful because she would have rather they saved him, but she was the closest one they could get to. They did what they could.”

Rescuers were forced to suspend their search on Monday afternoon as weather conditions in San Luis Obispo County made it too dangerous. They resumed on Tuesday at about 10.30am, hoping that a brief respite in the storms would allow them to locate Kyle before the next band of rain arrived.

The family had held out hope for a miracle on Monday, Mr Doan said, but that hope was fading a day and a half later.

Kyle and his mother left home around 7.15am on Monday on a rural path that winds between wineries and ranches and twice crosses the creek that feeds into the Salinas River, Mr Doan said. At some point, their car began floating away on rising waters, hit a tree and began filling with water.

Kyle’s mother took him out of his car seat and escaped the vehicle, Mr Doan said, but lost hold of her son in the coursing stream.

Their Chevrolet Traverse was found hours later, upside down and overrun with mud and debris, making it clear that she had made the right decision to leave the car when she did, he said.

The rescue teams looking for Kyle on Tuesday included divers and detectives, drones and helicopters scouring a broad area, said Mr Tony Cipolla, a spokesman with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office.

Water was still raging down the creek where he disappeared, making it tough to gauge how far the boy may have been carried, he said.

Kyle, who is 1.2m tall with short, dirty blonde hair and hazel eyes, was wearing a black puffer jacket, blue jeans, and blue and grey Nike tennis shoes when he was swept away, officials said, asking for the public’s help in finding him.

Central California was among the hardest hit areas on Monday, with hillsides collapsing on highways and flooded rivers and creeks. Another motorist drowned in San Luis Obispo County on Monday.

Mr Doan said it was only after his son went missing that his school cancelled classes and road blocks were put up to prevent people from driving down the same road that his wife took.

“Kyle was a blessing, he was a child of love. He was a great kid,” Mr Doan said. “It’s so unfair.”

NYTIMES