Deadly floods in Belize after tropical storms

updated 2:00 p.m. ET, Tues., June. 3, 2008

BELIZE CITY - Flash flooding in Belize killed at least four people and left two others missing, witnesses said, due to tropical storms that also killed at least three people in other Central American nations and drove thousands from their homes.
The weekend storms took most of Belize's 300,000 residents by surprise.

Early Monday, flash flood waters swept away a home in southern Belize's Stann Creek Valley, killing a man, his wife and their 14-year-old daughter, according to relatives. The couple's 12-year-old son is missing and presumed dead.

"That flood just came right now, sudden one, and when I look I saw my nephew's house over there and I told him to get out," Bedford Ritchie told Channel 7. "It looks like he was trying to pack up his things and the water didn't give him any break. The water just come right up and picked up their house and took it down there and mashed it up."

Wellington McKenzie told Channel 7 that a friend died trying to help him rescue others in their neighborhood.

"He couldn't stand up no more and he went underneath my house and there he drowned," McKenzie said. "They found him about two or three hours after."

Officials were also searching for a young boy who was pulled from his father's arms by floodwaters as the two tried to reach the safety of a mango tree.

"I went underneath the water and I bit my little boy in his hand, just to hold him, and by the time I came up back, he was gone," the boy's father, Philberto Roches, told Channel 7. "So I turned around and tried to find him and never did find him again."

The death toll had yet to be confirmed by authorities.

The rising waters also left dozens stranded on the roofs of their homes, washed out a key bridge to the southern section of the country and damaged highways.

Papaya plantations, shrimp farms and the country's three-month supply of rice were also wiped out.