Bracing for tragedy: Boy, 3, missing as flooding hits Orangeville area; Brantford families forced from homes//
Mother loses grip on three-year-old in desperate struggle to escape surging Grand River
BRANTFORD — Torrential rains and mild temperatures pushed the Grand River in to breach its banks Wednesday, forcing thousands of people from their homes and touching off a search for a missing toddler.
Local officials near Orangeville were bracing for tragedy as they scoured the swollen river for a three-year-old boy who went missing after the car he was riding in got swept off a washed-out road.
Ontario Provincial Police Const. Paul Nancekevell said the boy’s mother was driving near the river around 1 a.m. on Wednesday when her vehicle plunged into the rapidly rising waters.
“His mom got out of the car, she pulled him from the car but she lost her grip on him and he was swept down-river,” Nancekevell said. “They were in the middle of fast flowing water.”
Police are combing the area for the boy using helicopters, dive teams and ground search crews, he said.
He added the rescue crews are “keeping a good thought” about the youngster’s ultimate safety.
One other local official, however, said the effort was being viewed as a recovery operation rather than a rescue effort.
Grand Valley district fire chief Kevin McNeilly said weather conditions were treacherous at the time the mother and son, believed to be from the area, went into the water.
McNeilly, whose department was handling the search before police took over, said wouldbe rescuers were contending with dramatic spikes in the level of the river.
“It was extremely foggy. Very, very violent river last night,” McNeilly said. “At one point it raised up three feet (about 90 centimetres) in a matter of 20 minutes.”
The unexpected surges prompted a different kind of crisis nearly 100 kilometres away in Brantford.
There, officials declared a state of emergency due to flooding.
About 4,900 people in roughly 2,200 homes were under an evacuation order covering neighbourhoods surrounding the river after the unseasonable conditions dislodged an ice jam near the city.
Brantford mayor Chris Friel said flooding has shuttered many local businesses and schools as well as closing city trails.
Danielle Beaudoin, who lives less than a kilometre from the river’s shore, found out that she and her son would have to leave their home at about 9 a.m. on Wednesday.
“I had already taken him to school and I was getting ready for work myself when one of his older babysitters brought him back,” she said.
After rounding up the family cats, Beaudoin hastily packed food, water and a change of clothes for her and her son before driving out of the evacuation zone.
She said the river had risen so high that chunks of ice from the water surface were now resting on shore.
The mayor urged all Brantford residents to steer clear of the river and surrounding areas for the foreseeable future.
“It is never worth your personal safety for a view of the river ... stay away from the river,” Friel said at a news conference.
“That is not just for today or this afternoon or this evening.
“That will be for the next couple days at least.”
Friel said the state of emergency went into effect mid-Wednesday morning, adding that the river was still rising and was expected to peak later in the day.
Local roads and bridges were jammed as people began to make their way out of the three neighbourhoods covered under the evacuation order, he said.
City officials dispatched someone to the Indigenous community of Six Nations, about an hour from Brantford, to share real-time information on flood conditions.
Six Nations began mobilizing its emergency co-ordination team in case flooding reached the area.