Prince Harry,Oprah Winfrey to evacuate home as 5 year old was swept by flood in California

 

A five-year-old boy has been swept away by floodwaters on California's central coast, while an entire seaside community, home to Prince Harry, Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities, was ordered to evacuate.

Tens of thousands of people remained without power, and some schools were closed for the day.

Streets and highways transformed into gushing rivers, trees toppled, mud slid and motorists growled as they hit roadblocks caused by fallen debris.

The death toll from the relentless string of storms climbed from 12 to 14 on Monday, after two people were killed by falling trees, state officials said.

A roughly seven-hour search for the missing boy turned up only his shoe before officials called it off as water levels were too dangerous for divers, officials said.

The boy has not been declared dead, said spokesperson Tony Cipolla of the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office.

The boy’s mother was driving a truck when it became stranded in floodwaters just before 8am near Paso Robles, a small city inland from California's central coast, according to Tom Swanson, assistant chief of the Cal Fire/San Luis Obispo County Fire Department.

Bystanders were able to pull the mother out of the truck, but the boy was swept out of the vehicle and downstream, likely into a river, Mr Swanson said.

There was no evacuation order in the area at the time.

About 130 miles to the south, the entire community of Montecito and surrounding canyons scarred by recent wildfires were under an evacuation order that came on the fifth anniversary of a mudslide that killed 23 people and destroyed more than 100 homes in the coastal enclave.