Mojave Flash Flood Kills Three

A flash flood spawned by tremendous downpours swept a car off a Mojave Desert road, killing two sisters and a family friend who saved the daughter of one victim.

Family members looked on desperately Tuesday as rescuers tried to reach the vehicle.

"The car flipped over on my daughters, and they haven't been seen since," Angela Ridgeway told a local television station.

The car became stuck Tuesday afternoon on a street that dipped into a flood channel. It was washed about three blocks before flipping over, San Bernardino County sheriff's Sgt. Rich Bozwell said.

"We have some city streets that run through the flood control channels," Jim Thompson, Battalion Chief of the Twentynine Palms Fire Department, told CBS News. "It's like a big dip in the road and for the most part 364 days of the year these flood control channels are dry, until something like this happens.

"The car stalled out ... right in front of the family's home," he said.

The driver, Laura Lee Ridgeway, 38, was trapped and appeared to have drowned, said Adrienne Baldwin of the sheriff's department.

Her sister, Leslie Jean Juarez, 36, died after she and her 14-year-old daughter were thrown from the car into the raging water.

A 29-year-old family friend rescued the teen but was swept away and died, Baldwin said. He and Juarez were found several miles away.

The names of the family friend and girl were not immediately released. The teenager was staying with relatives, authorities said.

"It was fairly quick," Thompson said on CBS News' The Early Show. "It was a hard rain, and about 30 minutes, to 45 minutes after the rain started, the streets got a lot of surface flooding. And very shortly after that, the flood control channels filled up."

Twentynine Palms, in the desert near the north side of Joshua Tree National Park, is 120 miles east of Los Angeles.

It was the second major round of flash floods in the Mojave Desert in a week. Torrents of muddy water flowed over roads and through high desert communities north and east of greater Los Angeles on Aug. 20.

Thompson said his department successfully rescued other stranded motorists from the flash floods.

"Just before this call came in, one of my engine crews and myself rescued three individuals from stranded cars on the highway [that had] 2-3 feet of water in them," he said. "Another one of my staff was in the process of rescuing a mother and her children from home that had floodwater raging around the house."