8-year old sucked down "dark, scary ride"

An 8-year old US boy has survived with only minor injuries despite being swept into a flooded drain and surfacing in a creek over a kilometre away.

Kenny Markiewicz was playing with his cousin when the freak accident occurred after he went over to a "mud puddle, a big one". His hometown of Minnesota has been hit with record levels of rain and flooding over the past few days and murky water often disguised objects underneath the surface.

It wasn't until Kenny's mother heard her niece scream that she urgently dialled 911.

"He just was going across by the puddle and, apparently, there was a culvert or a pipe there and he fell in," she said.

As neighbours lifted manholes in search of Kenny, he had vanished down a drain of rushing water before his grandfather Gordon Marshall found him in a creek around one and a half kilometres away.

"The first thing I think I said to him is, "Are you alright? Do you know where you're at?" He didn't. He just screamed," said Mr Marshall.

"He was lost, petrified, scared to death."

Kenny said his mother was the only thought on his mind during a "dark scary ride" that had his family and friends in panic.

"I plugged my nose, I took a breath and I prayed," he said.