Kansas Flood Victims Found

Searchers Tuesday found the bodies of two people missing since floodwaters swept their vehicles off the Kansas Turnpike over the weekend, including a woman whose four children drowned in the high water.

The body of Melissa Rogers, 33, of Liberty, Mo., was found in a pond about 2 miles from Interstate 35, Fire Chief Jack Taylor said.

Another body, preliminarily identified as Al Larsen, 31, of Fort Worth, Texas, was also found Tuesday, Taylor said. He was missing from a separate vehicle.

Larsen and the Rogers family drowned after heavy rain sent torrents of floodwaters over the Interstate 35 late Saturday. Melissa Rogers' husband, Robert, 37, survived.

On Sunday, searchers found the bodies of the four Rogers children. Zachary, 5; Nicholas, 3; and Alenah, 1 were found strapped into their car seats in the family's overturned minivan. The fourth child, 8-year-old Makenah, was found three-quarters of a mile from the vehicle.

Meanwhile, in suburban Kansas City, authorities found the body Monday of an 18-year-old who attempted to wade in a rain-swollen creek.

Storms dampened Labor Day activities from the Midwest to the Northeast on Monday, pummeling Indianapolis with more than 7 inches of rain, washing out parades across Ohio and causing delays at the U.S. Open in New York.

Indiana was hit hard by a front that stretched across the Ohio Valley and combined with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico to create heavy rain in the eastern half of the United States, the National Weather Service said.

The 7.2 inches of rain in Indianapolis Monday was relentless and broke a 108-year-old record for the most rain ever in a single day.

"We're not afraid. We're just astonished," said Latrelle Corbin, 61, of Indianapolis. "We've never seen rain like this before."

It's also more rainfall in that area than for any of the other months so far this year, except for a soggy July, which got 8 inches of rain.

By Tuesday, the floodwaters were slowly beginning to recede. Police divers continued looking for a driver who was swept away while attempting to cross Fall Creek in Indianapolis.

Small boats ferried Indianapolis residents from homes cut off by floodwaters, and railroad ties floated around a mobile home park on the city's northeast side, where the water in places was up to 3 feet high.

At Ace Hardware in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel, there was a run Monday on sump pumps, sand bags and drain pipes. "We thought we'd be selling grills today," said Mike Ellis, an assistant store manager.

Robert Rogers Monday said that when the wall of water first hit the Kansas Turnpike, he thought his family was safe because the van was pushed up against a large concrete barrier.

That heavy barrier and others eventually gave way, sending the van off the road. Rogers said he kicked out the window in a desperate and frantic effort to save his family.

But he was quickly pulled by the rushing water from the vehicle, found on its roof Sunday about 1½ miles from the highway in south-central Kansas.