ROSE HILL, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas mother who was caught in flash flooding says she is “blessed” after she and her 3-year-old son were rescued from a tree. The Wichita Eagle reports that 32-year-old Cassandra Phillips of Burlington pulled her toddler, Ethan, from his car seat Friday night after floodwaters rose around her minivan in rural Rose Hill, Kan.

She spent an hour clinging to the tree limb with one leg while holding her son in the crook of her arm and talking to emergency dispatchers on her cellphone.

The National Guard soldier and mother of three says she didn’t mean to drive into a flood. She says the light was dim and that she was focusing on the “white lines of the road” when the van began floating.