ASHLAND, N.H. (AP) – A 7-year-old Rhode Island girl was killed after two small brooks merged into a raging torrent and swept her family’s SUV 100 yards downstream at a campground.

The girl’s father escaped from the car and screamed for help, and her mother and 5-year-old brother were rescued after clinging to a tree in the raging water for more than an hour Thursday evening.

Theresa Simione arrived back at the campground from a quilt store as the tragedy was unfolding.

“We heard the man screaming bloody murder,” Simione, of South Glens Falls, N.Y., said Friday. “He was screaming, ‘Help, help. The car is in the water. My family’s in the car. Call 9-1-1. Help me, Help me.”‘

“It’s nothing I’m ever going to get out of my head,” said Simione, 41.

Rescuers fought the water to get to the mother and child at the Ames Brook Campground.

Fire Chief Tom Stewart said the mother was against the tree holding her son when she was rescued. He believes the family was fleeing the flooding when their car was swept away.

Stewart said the flash flood followed a downpour, the latest in a series of rainstorms to hit the area in recent days.

“It poured so hard you couldn’t see two feet in front of you for a really long time,” Stewart said.

The girl’s body was found in the crumpled SUV when the water receded.

He said the boy was in stable condition Friday at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon. The family has asked officials not to release their names until they’ve notified family members of the tragedy.

About 29 people were evacuated from the campground and put up in hotels, said Stewart.

Stewart said a man who lives near the campground reportedly cut a path through the woods with a chain saw to help people get out.

Camper Herb Flick said the noise was overwhelming.

“There was so much roar from the water rushing, it’s amazing the fire department heard the screams,” said Flick, 69, of Milford, Del.

Farther south, heavy rain runoff and flooding caused a sink hole about 50 wide and 12 feet deep in the Weirs Beach section of Laconia. It washed out part of the boardwalk at the tourist attraction and nearly 200 feet of railroad track was undermined and left suspended, said state Emergency Management spokesman Jim Van Dongen.

“I describe it like a small tidal wave,” said Laconia Fire Chief and Emergency Management director Kenneth Ericson. “It was at least a foot deep.”

Police began receiving calls that the boardwalk was damaged around 7 p.m.

“It wasn’t like all of a sudden everything started caving in,” said Jacqui Crowley, 34, of Whitman, Mass., who watched the damage happen from the porch of her rented vacation cottage. “It was slow.”

On Friday, tourists trudged down soggy sidewalks, stopping at police barricades to snap pictures.

“It’s going to affect tourism for the rest of the summer,” Laconia Police Capt. Steve Clarke said.

Firefighters put out a fire at a plant nursery in the city caused by lightning. They also rescued a family trapped in a car. Roads in many other Lakes Region communities were closed because of flooding.

Crews cleaning up Thursday’s damage kept their eyes on the skies as more rain was predicted.

Heavy rains during the last couple of weeks prompted numerous flood watches and warnings, some still in effect Friday. The rain helped cause a landslide that closed a road in the northern part of the state earlier in the week.

Rain swollen streams and rivers also have swept three people to their deaths in the state since July 25.