Small creeks became deadly torrents in South Carolina floods

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Sampson Pringle stood on the roof of his stalled truck on an unfamiliar road in the pouring rain.

Two days later, after the historic flood waters started to recede, his body had washed up on someone's lawn, hundreds of feet away from his truck.

Pringle was one of 10 people who drowned in the flash floods in the Columbia area from Oct. 3-5.

Several smaller earthen dams broke, but engineers still haven't been able to piece together which ones failed first and started the chain reaction.

Pringle, a sweet, devoted family man who planned to go back to school and hoped to open a restaurant, was on unfamiliar Decker Boulevard just before the sun came up on Sunday, Oct. 4.

Alexandria Holmes had just left the hospital where she went to have stomach pains checked out when she drove down unfamiliar Sunset Drive instead of her typical route home, said her father, Bill Holmes.

Many roads were impassable or closed as the flooding spread across Columbia that day.

Robert Vance and Ricky McDonald were among five contract workers sent by R.J. Corman Railroad Group to check on and repair tracks damaged or ruined in the floods.

Richard Milroy took an alternate street out of the neighborhood, passing by Transportation Department workers who were putting up barricades.

Rescuers told Watts of arriving at sites where someone desperately called for help and seeing nothing but rushing water, or seeing seven or eight cars in deep, roaring creeks with no idea which ones might be occupied and which ones were empty.