Emergency crews in suburban Philadelphia intensified their search Monday for a missing 9-month-old boy and his 2-year-old sister who were swept away in a family car when torrential rains flooded a roadway.
While the East Coast grappled with the aftermath of downpours that closed roads and rendered the water supply undrinkable in places, the West and other parts of the country contended with sizzling temperatures and unsafe air quality attributed to Canadian wildfires.
In eastern Pennsylvania, authorities described Monday’s search for missing Matilda Sheils, 2, and her 9-month-old brother Conrad Sheils as a “massive undertaking” including 100 search crew members and numerous drones dispatched along a creek that drains into the Delaware River. The children are members of a Charleston, South Carolina, family that was visiting relatives and friends when they got caught in a flash flood Saturday.
“As they tried to escape the fierce floodwaters, dad took his 4-year-old son while the mother and the grandmother grabbed the two additional children,” said Upper Makefield Township Fire Chief Tim Brewer. While father and son made it to safety, “the grandmother, the mother, and the two children were swept away by the floodwaters,” he said.
The children’s mother, Katie Seley, 32, was among at least five people killed in the flooding, while the grandmother survived, Upper Makefield Police said in a social media post. The other victims’ names have not been released.
Monsignor Michael Picard of St. Andrew Roman Catholic Church, where family members are parishioners, said he spoke with the grandparents Sunday. The grandfather attended morning Mass on Monday, where the family was included in prayers.
“No matter how long I’ve been doing this — over and over and over, many, many years — you find yourself still helpless and without words to make people feel more comfortable,” Picard said. “And so you just simply pray with them for a few minutes.”