Flash flooding in Missouri triggered more than 351 rescues on Friday, and the emergency turned deadly when search crews later recovered the body of Faith Gregory. Floodwater rose fast enough that Gregory and her boyfriend called 911 around 3 a.m., only to have part of the wall of their home collapse and sweep her away.
The scale of the response was stark. The Missouri Regent C Incident Command said the rescues had climbed past 351 by 9:45 p.m. Friday, while 200 children from Camp Taum Sauk were relocated to St. Louis that night as the danger widened across Iron and Reynolds counties. Rain totals reached as high as 12.25 inches in those counties, a deluge that turned roads and low-lying homes into traps within hours.
Gregory’s body was recovered about a mile from her home in Crawford County around 11:30 a.m. Saturday, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. That gave a name and a final location to a disaster that had already forced emergency crews into a race against water, darkness and more rainfall.
What makes the loss harder to absorb is that the search never really stopped. As of Saturday evening, response groups were still looking for potential missing people, even after one person had been reported dead and the flood emergency had begun to ease into recovery. The threat had not passed; by Sunday, severe thunderstorms and flash flooding were still expected, only shifted farther south and east.
Jane Minar continued live coverage from Ironton on FOX Weather, but the bigger picture was already plain. This was not a brief burst of rain and a few stranded drivers. It was a sweeping flood event that forced hundreds of rescues, moved children out of harm’s way, and left one family in Crawford County with a loss that came in the middle of the night and ended miles from home.
