A child and three adults drowned in vehicles submerged in deep water after creeks swelled in the northeast and central counties, officials said.
At least four people, including a child, died in flooding and many more were rescued from inundated cars after heavy rainfall swept through parts of northern and central Alabama, officials said on Thursday. In Hoover, just south of Birmingham, a young man and woman were found dead in an S.U.V. in the Riverchase residential development, where lakes were so swollen from rainfall that they had merged, Mayor Frank V. Brocato said on Thursday. He said the couple had been driving down a hill and encountered flooding that had swamped Riverchase Parkway West. “They probably didn’t see there was that much moving water, and it literally swept their vehicle,” Mr. Brocato said. Lina Evans, the Shelby County coroner, identified the couple on Thursday as Latin Marie Hill and Myles Jared Butler, both 23. The floodwater was so deep that their vehicle went over some guardrails into a swollen creek and flipped upside down, Ms. Evans said. “It was raging,” she said. Nine to 10 inches of rainfall over 24 hours pooled in basements or swamped high-elevation areas in Hoover, which has about 92,000 people, intensifying on Wednesday night. “It parked itself right over Hoover, and for five hours, it was unrelenting,” said Mr. Brocato, a former firefighter of 42 years. In Marshall County, in the state’s northeast, Chief Shane Washburn of the City of Arab police said an adult and a child were rescued by firefighters from the top of their vehicle, which had been washed off a roadway into an overflowing creek.
