Four people, including two children, were missing on Saturday following flooding caused by torrential rains in Nova Scotia, police said.
The two children were traveling in a vehicle that was submerged and from which three other occupants managed to escape, said a spokesperson for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), adding that searches were underway to find them.
Two other people are missing in similar circumstances, the spokeswoman added. She did not specify the exact location of these two separate incidents, to prevent the public from interfering with the search.
Torrential rains that have battered the province since Friday evening, up to 150mm in places, have cut roads, flooded homes and threatened to cause a dam to burst.
Residents of the Windsor area, about 60 kilometers northwest of Halifax, received an evacuation order in the middle of the night because of the risk of a dam failure. But floodgates were opened on Saturday morning to reduce the pressure and the situation is “under control”, according to the mayor of Windsor, Abraham Zebian.
Images from television or social media showed roads turned into torrents and many abandoned cars.
Residents of the province have been told to stay home unless ordered to evacuate as many roads are impassable. Some 70,000 customers of electricity supplier Nova Scotia Power were without power in the early morning, but the number had fallen to 6,000 by the afternoon.