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A 16-year-old girl drowned and 10 other young people were pulled from the water after floodwaters swept three cars off a rural road east of Des Moines early on Aug. 11, 2010, authorities said.

Divers recovered the body of Jessica Nichole Webb of Altoona near the submerged cars in Mud Creek about 2:20 p.m., more than 10 hours after the vehicles went into the water, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office. The other 10 occupants were found clinging to trees and holding onto logs. Four were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.

The cars were swept off the road between Altoona and Mitchellville about 4 a.m. Dispatchers received an incomplete 911 call roughly 15 minutes later and used location data from the phone to work out where the callers were, the sheriff's office said.

"A female called crying for help. Then, we lost connection," Doug Phillips, a division chief with the sheriff's office, told reporters. Officials did not say which of the 11 occupants placed the call.

Mud Creek normally runs about 3 feet deep and 10 feet wide. Phillips said that on the morning of the drowning it "looked like a river," and that water was standing a foot and a half or more over the road. Storms had dropped 2 to 4 inches of rain across central and eastern Iowa overnight, with about 6 inches in some places.

The 11 people in the cars were between 16 and 21 years old. Phillips said the group had been at a party at one house and was heading somewhere else when the vehicles went in. Authorities said drinking was involved, but did not establish who had been drinking or how much.

Webb was a student at Southeast Polk High School, according to her obituary. The same storm system forced hundreds of evacuations elsewhere in Iowa that week and closed stretches of Interstate 35 and U.S. Highway 30.