MANSFIELD, Ohio – A woman drowned after jumping into fast-moving floodwaters to try to rescue her 9-year-old daughter, who slipped on a stone walkway into the water and was swept through 460 feet of drainage pipe into another creek.
The girl emerged from the pipe without serious injuries and was able to get out of the water and seek help, police Lt. Dave Nirode said. Firefighters found the body of her mother, Dianna Snyder, 40, about 100 feet downstream from where the girl came out of the pipe.
Snyder's drowning Wednesday in north-central Ohio at Kingwood Center, a public garden in Mansfield, was the first death reported in three days of storms.
The girl fell into a creek bed that is usually dry, Nirode said, but the steady rain swelled the creek to 4 feet deep and about 10 feet wide.
"We had flooding in places that I didn't know we had water," Nirode said.
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In Ashtabula County, firefighters, sheriff's divers and a Coast Guard helicopter crew resumed searching on Thursday for a 21-year-old man reported missing from a group swimming in a creek near the northeast Ohio village of Jefferson, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Matt Schofield.
Rain forced road closures and flooded basements in Mansfield, an area of the state that received up to 7 inches of rain Monday, the National Weather Service said.
Flooding from the rain forced more than 150 campers at Mohican State Park, about 20 miles southeast of Mansfield, to abandon their belongings and flee to emergency shelters. Officials said the park was to reopen Friday.
Forecasts for Ashland and Richland counties predicted a chance of additional rain through Thursday, while the Ashtabula forecast called for the weather to dry out.
The storms also produced five weak tornadoes in the southwestern part of the state. No injuries were reported .
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