EMPORIA, Kan. (AP) -- Searchers Tuesday found the bodies of two people missing since floodwaters swept their vehicles off the Kansas Turnpike over the weekend, including a woman whose four children drowned in the high water.
The body of Melissa Rogers, 33, of Liberty, Mo., was found around in a pond about 2 miles from Interstate 35, Fire Chief Jack Taylor said.
Another body, preliminarily identified as Al Larsen, 31, of Fort Worth, Texas, was also found Tuesday, Taylor said. He was missing from a separate vehicle.
Larsen and the Rogers family drowned after heavy rain sent torrents of floodwaters over the Interstate 35 late Saturday. Melissa Rogers' husband, Robert, 37, survived.
On Sunday, searchers found the bodies of the four Rogers children. Zachary, 5; Nicholas, 3; and Alenah, 1 were found strapped into their car seats in the family's overturned minivan. The fourth child, 8-year-old Makenah, was found three-quarters of a mile from the vehicle.
On Monday, Robert Rogers said that when the wall of water first hit the turnpike, he thought his family was safe because the van was pushed up against a large concrete barrier.
That heavy barrier and others eventually gave way, sending the van off the turnpike. Rogers said he kicked out the window in a desperate and frantic effort to save his family.
But he was quickly pulled by the rushing water from the vehicle, found on its roof Sunday about 1 1/2 miles from the highway in south-central Kansas.
Rogers said his faith would sustain him through the tragedy.
``We will get through this,'' Rogers said Monday. ``We will rise above this. And by God's grace, good will somehow come from this.''
Rogers described his four children as ``beautiful gifts.''
Authorities have said Larsen called his wife Saturday evening, told her his Jeep had stalled and asked her to come get him. The wife, Elizabeth-Anne Larsen, arrived at the scene Sunday morning but had not heard from her husband since that call.
