FORT YATES – Two people are dead after flash flooding in Sioux County, late Monday night into Tuesday morning.

Some of the pictures that you see is the culvert that carries Kenel Road over Joe Brush Creek in Southern Sioux County, about 2 miles from the North Dakota and South Dakota border.

But that culvert was washed away thanks to the awesome power of flash flooding Monday night and early this morning. And unfortunately, that flash flooding cost two people their lives.

It was tiny Joe Bush Creek in Southern Sioux county, about two miles from the South Dakota border and well inside the limits of the Standing Rock Reservation that flooded.

But late Monday night and early Tuesday morning the creek grew angry, swelling and engulfing tiny Kenel road. The flooding left a 30 to 40 foot section of the road missing, resulting in a 60 to 70 foot drop to the creek below.

Family members who didn’t want to go on camera tell KX News Trudy Peterson was on her way to work from Mobridge to a hospital in Fort Yates and most likely never saw the road was washed away because it was dark and raining.

Also lost in the flooding, a United States Postal worker from Mobridge who worked the Southern North Dakota route.

Two others survived the plunge and were rescued, a bus driver who was flown from the scene to a Bismarck hospital and the driver of a pickup truck who was taken by ambulance to a Mobrige hospital with unknown injuries.

Search crews worked from early morning through early evening to clear the wreckage and search for the missing, using every available resource including water rescue teams from both Burleigh and Morton counties. The highway patrol even sent a plane in the hopes of finding those missing.

Sioux County Sheriff Frank Landeis tells KX News they have already hired a contractor to begin working on the repairs to Kenel road….but they expect it to be closed for at least the next two months

Anywhere between 5 and 7 inches of rain fell in that area, causing all the flash flooding.

Several times during the search…crews had to scale back from the culvert because it kept collapsing, also the Sheriff tells KX News they are going to wait a few days to allow the creek to fall further, then they’ll go back and look for more potential victims.