The storm winds continue to roar down Needle Eye Lane, but the silence from the homes along these fields seems almost deafening.
A father and two of his children are still missing after their boat flipped over yesterday in a creek near their family farm.
Steven Loftey, Chief of Fire and Rescue, says it seems the family was playing, and paddling around in the water, when something went wrong.
"The water had separated one side of the farm from the other they had decided to cross over to the other side and that's when they had the problem," he says.
3 rafts, 2 kayaks, 2 personal watercrafts and several investigative teams were involved in the search.
Thursday the language, and process, made the transition from a "search"... To a "recovery".
"The creek was back in its banks. It allowed us to do a thorough ground search in the area adjacent to where they overturned at downstream. We also put people down in the water," he says.
For this quiet community, the Chief says it's a tragedy.
"Things like this do happen. We hate that it happened. For us the tragic part is that we didn't find them and get them out safely, but now becomes the hard part, to continue to search for them to bring some closure to the family," he says.
Lofty says water can be much deeper, faster and more dangerous than it may seem.
"Unless you're very well-versed with water and the dynamics of it, you can find yourself in a very tragic situation like this," he says.
In Polk County, Brittany Shaw, WDEF News 12.
