California police are feverishly continuing their search and rescue efforts for a missing 5-year-old boy who was swept away by raging floodwaters in Central California amid the state’s catastrophic flooding and torrential rainfall that has left thousands of residents under flood watches.
Authorities and family are holding out hope that 5-year-old Kyle Doan, a kindergarten student at Lillian Larsen Elementary School in San Miguel, can be found after he went missing Monday. On Monday at approximately 3 p.m., the search efforts were called off because rising levels of the Salinas River were too dangerous for divers to continue the search.
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Rescuers resumed searching on Tuesday for a 5-year-old boy who was swept away by fast-rising floodwaters in Central California.
(San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office)
“A break in the intense storms is allowing today’s search which will involve all available resources of the Sheriff’s Office including the USAR (Underwater Search and Rescue) Team and air operations,” a statement from the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s office said. “The conditions, however, remain extremely dangerous. The water level is high and continues to be fast moving.”
The Sheriff’s Office shared that 25-30 people along with drones are searching for the young boy. Authorities shared that they have requested assistance from the California Highway Patrol helicopter to patrol from above in hopes to reunite Doan with his family.
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Authorities are still calling the efforts an “active search” despite the 5-year-old boy being missing for over 24-hours, with authorities saying that, “it’s always a rescue operation until the child is found.”
“We always have hope, and we never want to take that hope away from the parents of the child either” San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Tony Cipolla told Fox News Digital.
An empty vehicle is surrounded by floodwaters on a road in Oakland, Calif., Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023.
(AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
People look on as a tow truck pulls a car out of a flooded intersection on January 04, 2023 in Mill Valley, California.
(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Law enforcement cautioned well-wishing neighbors and residents from joining in on the search efforts, saying, “The public is strongly cautioned not to conduct self-initiated searches and put themselves in harms way and become a victim requiring resources that would otherwise be used for searching.”
On Monday, the boy’s mother was driving a white truck when it became stranded in floodwaters just before 8 a.m. near Paso Robles, 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 carried out of the vehicle and swept downstream, Swanson told the Associated Press. There was no evacuation order in the area at the time in the area.
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A firefighter discovered one of the boy’s shoes, but crews still had not found the child.
Fox News’ Greg Norman contributed to this report.
