A shivering three-year-old was found clinging to her drowned mother in Texas after the woman tried desperately to save them both from Hurricane Harvey’s destruction.
The pair had become trapped in the mother’s vehicle in a flooded parking lot of an office park on Tuesday afternoon, according to Captain Brad Penisson of the fire-rescue department in Beaumont.
WATCH: Devastating flooding on the streets of Texas.
A witness saw the woman, who police have now identified as 41-year-old Colette Sulcer, try to walk to safety when the strong and swift current from a flooded drainage canal swept them away.
The three-year-old was found holding on to the floating woman almost a kilometre downstream by a police and fire-rescue team on a boat.
Rescuers got to the child in the nick of time, pulling her into a boat just before they would have gone under a railroad trestle where the water was so high, the boat could not have followed.
The young child is being treated for hypothermia but is doing well and expected to be released from hospital on Wednesday.
Elsewhere in Texas, a couple welcomed their baby girl as Hurricane Harvey reached its devastating heights.
Moments after power was cut by the storm, Isabel Pena started going into labour, forcing the pair to deliver the baby using light from a mobile phone.
The baby was in such a rush to get out, however, she beat the paramedics who were still trying to make their way through debris on Saturday morning.
“I had walked away with the light to the front door to see if EMS was coming and then I hear her scream ‘we need the light’ so I came back and as soon as I got back to the room I seen her head and then right then it was over,” said Andrew Garza, the baby’s father.
The paramedics knocked on the door seconds after their baby was born.
Mum and bub are doing well.
