A coordinated search continued Thursday in Barstow after police said a 2-year-old boy was carried away by fast-moving floodwaters during a heavy storm that swept through the high desert region. Authorities described the child as missing after the incident late Wednesday, and urged anyone with information to contact local law enforcement as rescue crews scoured washes and low-lying channels.

Barstow, a city of roughly 25,000 people in San Bernardino County along the I-15 corridor, recorded heavy downpours that prompted flash-flood warnings from the National Weather Service. Police said crews from the Barstow Police Department, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and regional search-and-rescue units were deployed. Several road closures and advisories were in effect as water flowed into normally dry arroyos and culverts, officials added.

“This is a rapidly evolving situation,” a police statement said. “Our primary focus is locating the child and ensuring the safety of residents. We ask everyone to avoid flood-affected areas and follow official instructions.” Local fire officials warned residents to stay away from waterways; in desert terrain, even a short, intense storm can produce torrents capable of carrying people and vehicles.

The episode highlights a characteristic hazard of the Mojave and other desert basins: rare but intense convective storms produce concentrated runoff that overwhelms natural and built drainage. The National Weather Service has repeatedly cautioned that low-lying washes and riverbeds can fill quickly with little notice. For Barstow and similar municipalities, the frequency and ferocity of such events present practical and fiscal challenges.

Climate scientists and federal agencies say heavier, more extreme precipitation events have become more common in parts of the United States, a pattern attributed to a warming atmosphere that holds more moisture. While this event will be evaluated on its local meteorology, officials and policy experts note the broader implication: municipalities must invest in resilient stormwater systems, better early-warning infrastructure and public education to reduce loss of life and property damage.

Economic consequences can be significant even for single-storm events. Floods impose cleanup costs, emergency response expenses and disruptions to local commerce and freight movement in corridor cities such as Barstow. Many residents in sporadically flooded areas do not carry flood insurance, and limited municipal budgets constrain upgrades to culverts, retention basins and alert systems. Local leaders face the tradeoff of competing priorities for infrastructure dollars amid growing climate-related risks.

As daylight search operations continued, police requested that anyone who witnessed the incident, or who has home surveillance or dash-cam footage from the area around the time of the storm, come forward. Shelters and community assistance were standing by for impacted families, and county officials said they would review the response after the immediate search concludes.

The outcome of the search will reverberate beyond this single community: if the boy is not found, it will likely intensify calls for stronger investments in flood preparedness across California’s desert and inland regions as extreme weather events become a more persistent feature of public safety planning.