Survivors In The News
By Ben Sherwood
The Survivors Club
In El Dorado, Kansas earlier this month, a 15-year-old girl on her way home from high school lost control of her Honda Accord and crashed into a drainage ditch. Bayleigh Stovall hydroplaned on pooled water that had collected on Main Street during a downpour. Bayleigh managed to call a friend who then dialed 911. "The last thing I heard from her is gurgling," the friend told the emergency dispatcher. "She can't get out of her car. It's through her window."
Rescuers took around 50 minutes to find Bayleigh but it was too late. Rushing water had carried her silver car 67 feet downstream into a drainage culvert where it was wedged so tightly that firefighters had to break a window to pull her out.
Every year, around 125 people like Bayleigh die because of flooding. Believe it or not, it's the #1 cause of weather-related fatalities in this country. Sure, tornadoes and hurricanes get a lot of attention, but flooding kills the most.
These losses are especially tragic because so many are preventable. As the Red River rises to a 112-year high this week and floods spread across the upper reaches of the United States, it's worth remembering a few simple rules of survival:
