Searchers continue to pump water from flooded Nova Scotia field in search for missing people

Workers are continuing to pump water from a flooded field in Nova Scotia that is the focus of a search for four people, including two children, who went missing in a torrent of water Saturday.

Industrial pumps steadily emptied a flooded field northwest of Halifax on Monday as searchers scoured the area for four people, including two children, who went missing after two vehicles were swamped by rushing floodwaters over the weekend.

Abraham Zebian, mayor of West Hants Regional Municipality, was at the site earlier in the day and said search teams were pumping more than 94,000 litres of water a minute from the field. The goal, he said, was to get the water level low enough that people can search the area by foot.

"We're going to stay positive until we have some closure here," Zebian said.

On Saturday evening, an RCMP dive team recovered an unoccupied pickup truck in more than two metres of water and said it was believed to be the vehicle the children were travelling in. Police said the children were with three other people who managed to escape.

Searchers are looking in the same area for a second vehicle in which a youth and a man who are unaccounted for were travelling.

Although police haven't officially said how the vehicles ended up submerged, people in the area have told The Canadian Press that the nearby Meander River spilled its banks and flooded low-lying land.

Heavy rain, which began Friday, dumped between 200 millimetres and 250 mm of water along Nova Scotia's South Shore, across the Halifax area and into central and western parts of the province.