'You can feel the loss': Family searching for unhoused man believed to have washed away in floodwaters near Kinnickinnic River

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — Search parties are being planned in the days ahead for people believed to be missing after last week's flooding.

The bridge under S. Chase Avenue and First Street in Milwaukee used to be filled with furniture and belongings of those who made it their home.

After last week's flooding, it's now empty, and some people who lived here haven't been seen since.

"The discomfort of not knowing where your loved one is, I think is the most painful part," said Arturo Vazquez, whose uncle, 59-year-old Miguel Flores, has been missing for nine days. "We're hoping, obviously, that he's alive, but the hope is, I guess, pretty far now."

Vazquez said Flores lived under the bridge on the Kinnickinnic River, and was homeless by choice.

His family is worried that he may have been swept away by floodwaters.

"I actually talked to one person that confirmed that he was here with them and tried to wake them up, but the water was rising so quick that there was no chance for them to even get out," Vazquez said.

He tells CBS 58 he called the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office to ask if anyone was found in the water.

"They basically told me they had identified three bodies by fingerprint, but none of them was Miguel Flores," Vazquez explained.

So far, the medical examiner's office has identified two unhoused people found in the water after the floods: 72-year-old Isaias Serna, and 48-year-old Juan Carlos Sierra-Campos.

"The camps do report multiple people that they usually see on a day-to-day basis that are just gone," said Donnalisa Hernandez, with Ministreets Christian Urban Outreach.

Her group visited Flores' camp every Friday, and they said Serna also lived there.

Outreach volunteers think Flores is one of at least five people who are lost.

"We want to do a search party on Saturday and try to get as many people as possible to search the land and the waters, going all the way down the river," said Landa Alvarado, co-founder of Ministreets Christian Urban Outreach.

Many of those who lived alongside Flores said he was like family.

"As we've been talking to them, they've been crying," Vazquez said. "You can feel the loss."

They want people to understand that lives were lost in the floods, and they mattered.

"There's such an urgency here to be family, and to be the community to the people who live out here," Hernandez said. "We need to be as one unit, and we want to be able to grieve those that are gone."

The search party will start at the S. Chase Avenue bridge at 9 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 23.